


The Shepherd Boy and the Wolves

by Guede



Series: The Sheep Chronicles [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Angst and Humor, BAMF Stiles, Biting, Crack Treated Seriously, Dom/sub Undertones, Fingerfucking, Fractured Fairy Tale, Full Shift Werewolves, Incest, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Nipple Play, Pack Cuddles, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Sheep, Slow Build, Stiles and His Sheep Posse, Topping from the Bottom, Werewolf Culture, Young Derek Hale, Young Peter Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:09:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 61,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9808652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: After Derek’s nearly seduced by a hunter into betraying his family, his mother thinks it’s a good idea to send him out into the world and learn how not to fall for traps like that.  Peter comes along, because Peter likes exploring, and that’s why they decide to explore a haunted mountain.Stiles lives on that mountain.  With his sheep.  They’re very tasty-looking, and well, Derek and Peter are werewolves.Hah.2/24/17:Added the epilogues.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Derek is a teenager here, but I'm deliberately not plugging a specific age for him, which is why this is not tagged for underage sex.

There comes a time in every young werewolf’s life when they leave their pack and strike out on their own, getting a taste of independence and freedom before they decide where and how they’ll settle down. Or, in Derek’s case, because their mother is finally washing her hands of his messes, not that he can really blame her.

“Oh, Derek,” she says sadly, holding his face in her hands. She keeps fussing with that swirl on the back of his head that never lays down right, and he can see her jaw muscles twitching like any second she’ll shift and try to lick it straight. “I love you. You’re my son, I will always love you, and never forget it. That said, you’re old enough now and the pack is just so big these days, and I just don’t think you’re getting enough time and guidance here.”

Derek mumbles something that’s not a protest, because she’s the alpha, after all. And besides, he wants to go. He really does. He wants to do the right thing by everybody and not be selfish and stick around just because it’s _easier_ with his pack. That’s the least he can do, to show his mother he really does mean to do right by all the time and trouble she’s taken to raise him.

“Just remember, you’re not really leaving,” his mother says, staring deep into his eyes. “Derek. Look at me. Pack is pack, no matter how many miles apart we are. All right?”

“Yeah, Mom,” Derek sighs. He makes himself meet her gaze and then immediately regrets it when he sees how teary she is.

His mother sniffles, tries to laugh it off, and then gives up and wraps her arm tightly about his head, crushing his face into her shoulder as she rubs her cheek along the side of his head, scenting him just like she would when he was little. But he’s not little now, he’s a grown—at least physically—werewolf, so Derek winces off the sharp, cold twist in his chest and just puts his hands up and tries to pat her into calming down.

“Mom, come on,” says his sister Cora, coming up to them. She shoots Derek a dirty look, reminding him it’s all his fault their mother’s upset, and then wraps her arms around their mother’s waist, pointedly scratching him till he has to angle his belly out of her way. “It’ll be okay, he’s just going off with uncle Peter.”

“Yeah, at least we all already know _he’s_ a psychotic murderer,” his other sister Laura mutters.

Peter looks up from where he’s been impatiently fiddling with the packhorse’s reins. “I’m sorry, did somebody say I was a murderer? Somebody whose idea of mentoring is to point at a _known_ hunter tavern and say why don’t you go make some friends?”

Cora eeps and twists herself around so that both their mother and Derek are between her and the other two, while Laura’s eyes go full red. “I’m just saying you better take care—” Laura starts growling.

“Emphasis on the _better_ ,” Peter says dryly, while deliberately looking away from her.

Laura’s shoulders hunch back towards a shift and Derek, gritting his teeth, gets himself ready to launch between them…only to find that his mother’s beaten him to it, flinging herself forward so suddenly that Peter, startled, drops the reins and stumbles backwards into a tree. By then Derek’s mother has locked her arms around Peter’s neck and buried her face in his chest and is downright _sobbing_. Blinking rapidly, Peter holds his hands over her back and waves them a little, and Derek slowly realizes that _Peter_ has no idea what to do. Peter. Peter doesn’t know.

“…so _young_ …only just stopped sticking your kills under your bed…” Derek’s mother saying, the muffled fragments drifting out to the rest of them. “…going to do…your _books_ …”

“Well, I’d hope you keep anyone from throwing them out or trying to use what they’re too stupid to keep from backfiring on them,” Peter says, looking relieved at having something to criticize.

But Derek’s mother doesn’t even snort. No, she just clings harder to Peter and wails something about the adorable way Peter used to blow up the kitchen with his experiments. Peter goes back to hovering his hands with a pained look on his face, while Laura and Cora gesture to each other like one of them, _not_ the one gesturing, should do something about her.

Derek sighs and makes himself clear his throat. “Mom. _Mom_. We should…I think we should…go…”

“…I know, I know, just…listen, I’ll _kill_ anybody who hurts you, okay?” his mother says. Prying herself off Peter, sort of—she’s still got a good grip on his shoulder and she’s kind of speaking to him as much as she is to Derek. “You take care of each other and I’ll deal with the bodies, all right? Oh, you’re so _young_ , I just can’t believe it’s that time…”

“I’m older than you were when you had Laura,” Peter mutters. He weasels his arm out of Derek’s mother’s grip and then deftly inserts the packhorse between them before she can grab him again. Then he looks up, spots Derek, and impatiently jerks his chin. “All right, then, shall we?”

“Okay,” Derek mutters. He tries not to look at his mother. Or listen to her heartbeat, or sniff too much after her salt-streaked scent. “Yeah. I guess.”

* * *

So Derek isn’t going by himself. Peter’s coming along, partly because he’s never gone off from the pack either—although anybody pointing out how late he’s left it usually ends up the new skin in the den’s family room—and partly because the whole point of this is to teach Derek things he hasn’t been able to learn with the pack. “Like how to survive without one?”

“Well, do you see any other werewolves around here?” Peter asks, checking them in to a snug-looking inn on a busy trading road.

“No, but—” Derek has to stop because Peter’s hauled off the packs from their horse and lumped them all into Derek’s arms “—but we’re—this isn’t—”

“For God’s sake, Derek, if you want to learn how to start a fire with a couple rocks and dig out a den with your own two bare hands, you could’ve stayed home and done that,” Peter scoffs. He calls over a stablehand and has their horse led off, and then takes them around to the inn’s back door. “You’ve lived in the woods your whole life, if you still don’t know what to do with that, even I can’t help you.”

Derek grunts, because that’s just about all he can do behind the small mountain of bags. Sure, he’s a werewolf, but it feels like Peter’s packed nothing but books and the things keep shifting around unexpectedly on him, jabbing sharp corners through the leather sacks or threatening to drop the whole bag with their weight, and it’s all he can do to bob and weave up the narrow staircase after Peter without losing one.

“This, nephew, is a rare opportunity,” Peter says expansively. He strides into their room and then spins around with one arm out, a satisfied smile on his face. “We’re out in the world with nothing and no one to answer to, and everything to learn.”

He’s about an inch away from banging his head into the sole lantern hanging from the rafters, and the room’s so small that his outflung fingertips are nearly scraping the far wall, but Derek knows his uncle well enough to know that pointing out the speech would’ve been more impressive down by the road isn’t going to go over well. So he just drops the bags onto the one bed and tries not to groan as all the places where the books dug in prick with pain, all at the same time. Werewolf healing’s great for, say, an antler to the gut, but for some reason it doesn’t really save you from those tiny everyday pains.

“And you in particular are going to benefit from this,” Peter goes on. He lowers his arm and then pushes past Derek to dig into the packs, pulling out a fresh set of clothing and what looks like one of those books he’s always scribbling in. “Woods are just so—so monotonous, everyone always pursuing the same silly little goals, scrapping over this or that stump…same set of faces over and over again. Atrophies the mind.”

“If this is something about I should be more careful about strangers, I think I learned that one,” Derek can’t help muttering.

Peter looks up irritably and Derek starts to stiffen up, but then sighs and instead just turns away. He flops onto the end of the bed, waiting for Peter to rush off to whatever thing’s caught his fancy, and so he’s caught off-guard when Peter kicks his ankle. Then drags him back up onto his feet by one arm.

“Derek, you’re never going to learn about strangers if you don’t meet any,” Peter says. He pulls Derek a few inches towards the door, looking critically over Derek from head to toe, and then makes one of those faces that means he’s not satisfied but doesn’t think it’s worth the effort to fix it. “The whole point of my coming with you is so you’ll actually have someone who can tell you who _not_ to talk to. Or flirt with, or allow to drag you behind the tavern and pull up her skirt, or talk into walking you home as if you’re some precious little flower whose purity wasn’t already—”

“Okay, okay, fine, I get it,” Derek says, yanking his arm free.

Peter looks at him again. “Do you?”

“…I get you want me to go downstairs,” Derek mutters after a second. He lets Peter go out the door first, then follows at the other man’s heels. “And I guess I have to talk to somebody?”

“What? No, don’t be ridiculous. Unlike your older sister, _I_ don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can teach somebody to jump by dropping them in a hole,” Peter says. He leads them out into the back courtyard and over to the well, where he lays a fresh shirt on the rim and then pulls up a bucket of water to wash his hands, face, and neck.

“Didn’t you do that to that one cousin?” Derek says.

Peter sluices water back through his hair, then ducks his head and blows his nose out into the dirt by the well. He shakes the drops off his hands, slaps his palms against his thighs, and then strips off his shirt before straightening up. The water rolls out of his hairline and down his back, thick trickles splitting up so hair-fine that when they catch the sunlight, they edge his muscles in silver.

A maid walking between the main building and what smells like the kitchen leans over to ogle Peter for a second longer. Derek catches her at it and she blinks, then gives him a wide smile, lifting her hand and making some kind of gesture between the two of them.

“That lesson wasn’t about _jumping_ , Derek, that was about not dragging home a disaster and expecting your mother to extricate him without any repercussions whatsoever,” Peter says. He cups up some water and splashes it over his back, then scrubs at the point between his shoulderblades so they push up and bulge the muscles around them. “And no, you don’t have to talk to anyone, that’d clearly be sticking the baby in the wolfsbane patch, but you should at least try to acknowledge them. People remember the antisocial ones, you know.”

Then he turns around. Flashes a smile at the maid, who giggles and then wanders off towards the kitchen, before tossing the fresh shirt over his arms and head. He pulls it down, idly plucking where the collar is sticking to his wet skin, and then raises his head and sniffs after the maid.

“Okay, fine, but I thought you said if I ever flirted with somebody again, I’d better do it where I have somewhere to hide the body,” Derek says.

Peter looks back and presses his lips together, and for a second Derek thinks the man might just stalk off. But Peter just takes a deep breath, rolls his eyes up, and then claps his hand on Derek’s shoulder. “I _said_ , if you ever flirted with a _hunter_ again,” he says. “Now, did she look like a hunter to you?”

“You also said even hunters have their pretty ones,” Derek says after a long second. “And then Mom told you if you were going to keep sizing up Kate’s chest like that, you might as well be the one who took the shovel and—”

“Yes, yes, Derek, let’s just give away all the family secrets in broad daylight,” Peter mutters, eyes rolling again, as he slides his hand across Derek’s shoulders so his arm is tucked heavily around Derek’s neck. He scoops up his old shirt and then starts walking them towards the kitchen. “Anyway, glad as I am that you actually have a _memory_ these days, that isn’t my point. The point is, you’re obviously never going to learn to spot one if you keep thinking all hunters come in the same shape, sex, and ugly boots.”

The maid from earlier’s standing in the doorway, helping another maid to stack up steaming pots onto a platter nearly as big as a table. She looks up, elbows the second maid, and they both giggle before suddenly straightening up and twitching at their skirts and hair.

“So…we’re trying to see if they’re hunters?” Derek whispers, just before they get within earshot.

An odd ripple goes over Peter’s face. To people who don’t know him, it probably just looks like he’d wrinkled his nose, but Derek recognizes it for the exasperated near-shift it is. Then Peter shakes his head and yanks Derek a little closer to him, making the bones in Derek’s shoulders creak as they mount the kitchen steps. “Would that happen to be _mutton_ I smell?” he says loudly, with frequent pointed glances towards Derek. “Mmm, my favorite, and I do love _cumin_ and oh, are those _cloves_ too? How well-sourced you are.”

Why he keeps looking over when he’s trying to charm the—oh. Derek finally gets it, just as one of the maids leans out and coyly asks whether he’d like a taste. He glances back at Peter, but Peter is busy trying to get the other maid to tell him what’s in the stew, despite her protests that the cook will kill her if she gives away the secret recipe. The first maid laughs, bringing Derek’s attention back around, and then she says if he doesn’t like mutton, she might have some roast chicken if he’s nice to her.

Derek smiles weakly, but she turns around slow enough to give him a good look at her ankles kicking up from under her skirt, so he guesses that was good enough. She goes back for the chicken and he goes back to sniffing out what’s in the kitchen, checking for anything that might scream hunter.

“Or witch, or possibly just a disgruntled employee who knows their poisonous herbs,” Peter says later, once they’ve obtained dinner and sneaked away from the overly touchy maids. He shrugs and then inhales another spoonful of the mutton stew, which is, Derek has to admit, almost as good as second-cousin Ariadne’s. “You can’t be too careful.”

“So the kitchen seemed okay,” Derek says, holding up the unicorn-horn testing wand Peter had shoved at him. “Are we worried somebody’s following us or something?”

A second later, he realizes that’s a stupid question, with what Peter just said about being careful, but surprisingly enough, Peter doesn’t call him on it. Instead the other man’s frowning and staring past Derek’s shoulder…listening to something in the common room below. The inn’s close to full but none of the other travelers had smelled or acted suspicious—most of them seem to be tired merchants on the way to some huge fair in the capital—so Derek hasn’t been really keeping tabs on their conversations.

And when he tunes in now, he still doesn’t hear anything alarming: it’s all talk about prices and taxes and how much they’ll have to bribe the city guards. Maybe the odd mutter about the old king; apparently there was some kind of nasty rebellion in the capital a couple years ago, but Derek’s family lives so far out that they don’t really need to pay attention to politics.

Well, that’s what Derek’s always thought, since his mother’s never told them they should learn about it, but Peter looks so intent that Derek starts to think maybe this is another one of those lessons he’s supposed to be picking up. So he chews more quietly and tries to follow that conversation, only for one of the merchants to say he’s going to turn in early so he can get up with sunrise and not waste time.

“Interesting,” Peter says. He pokes his spoon at the remainders of his stew, then sets the bowl aside and climbs out of the bed.

The mattress is too close to the floor for them to fit the packs under it, so they just piled up the packs against the far wall. Which actually is near enough that, as Peter digs through his bags, pulling out books and putting them aside, he runs out of space on the floor and starts handing books up to Derek on the bed.

“The king?” Derek says.

Peter glances up, then shakes his head. He’s too intent on whatever he’s looking for to be annoyed. “Hmmm, no, what they were saying about the roads.”

“The roads?” Derek says.

“About not wanting to travel at night,” Peter says absently, waving one hand. “Through the pass. This isn’t werewolf land, you know.”

“You mean it’s not pack land,” Derek says, and this time Peter looks up for long enough to catch his eye. “There are werewolves. We saw those marks on that tree, they weren’t that old.”

Snorting, Peter dives back into the packs. “You don’t need to remind me about things _I_ pointed out to you, Derek,” he says. He finally settles on a book and pushes himself up against the wall to start flipping through it. “Besides, omegas skulking around where half-grown pups aren’t making a hash of their first time out isn’t going to account for it. Some of those fatcat traders have decent taste in bodyguards, you know.”

Derek opens his mouth to say that yeah, he did know, and he had noticed the hardbitten types with the battered warhorses by the stable, and also, Peter, he’s not _completely_ stupid. Then a woman’s laugh drifts up—somewhere outside their window, a warm sound that floats over the scuffle of two pairs of feet and the sudden, hot thump of an excited heartbeat.

She laughs again and Derek recognizes that flirty maid who’d stared at them at the well. The man with her, he thinks it’s probably one of those guards, and they’re talking about more prices and Derek swallows roughly and jerks his head away. Stares at the near wall for a second, watching the weird flickers over it, before realizing that that’s not a moth fluttering around, that’s just the shadow of the pages of the book Peter’s reading.

He looks back at Peter, but his uncle’s already forgotten all about Derek, nose deep in that book, mouth quirked to the side with a little bit of tongue-tip peeking out from the corner, Peter’s so busy concentrating on it. Not that Derek was expecting Peter to pay any attention to him.

There’s still the stew, and Derek’s old enough now, he shouldn’t be wallowing like the pining heroes in those stupid ballads Laura loves so much. He never even liked those songs even when he’d been younger, and he just stops himself there and finishes up dinner.

“Where are you going?” Peter says, not looking up, when Derek gets off the bed.

“To take these back?” Derek says. He holds up his and Peter’s bowls, then sighs as Peter continues not to look at him. “So they don’t think we’re stealing—”

“Just put them outside the door, there’s no point in paying for service if you’re just going to do it yourself.” Peter slouches down the wall, absently chewing on a nail. Then hikes up his knee and props the book against it, and looks over the top of the book at Derek. “Try and put them far enough so that it won’t attract rats in here, in case service is running behind tonight.”

Derek rolls his eyes but does as Peter says. People are coming upstairs, even though it’s not completely dark outside…and then he nearly trips over Peter, turning back around, because Peter’s actually still looking at him.

“Sit down before you hurt something,” Peter snaps, jerking the book out of Derek’s way. He frowns as Derek slaps a hand to the wall to steady himself, then sighs and reaches up to help Derek down. “Now, would you like to hear what we’re doing next?”

It takes a second for Derek to realize that his mouth is hanging open. He shakes himself and shuts it, and then stifles an alarmed noise as Peter, making one of those put-upon faces, starts to close the book. “Wait—yeah, yeah, I would. I mean—are you—you’re actually going to tell me?”

“I told Tal—your mother I’d watch you.” Peter’s irritated, as usual. But…maybe it’s the dim light, but for a moment his eyes flick away from Derek and his shoulders twitch in, and he looks almost embarrassed. “I know you and your sisters think all sorts of things about me, but if I wanted to get rid of you, Derek, I’d try a surer way than just trying to lose you. Even if you do have a terrible habit of wandering off.”

“I wouldn’t wander off if people would tell me how long we’re supposed to be somewhere in the first place,” Derek mutters, but he keeps it down and pointed into the wall as he scoots in besides Peter. “So what is this?”

Peter looks pained, and once Derek gets a look at the book, he can’t really fault Peter for that. “A map,” Peter says, with the kind of precise, careful tone that means he’s an inch away from just giving up on Derek completely. “It’s of the pass, back when they first opened it up. I know you despise history, so I suppose it’s hopeless to ask whether you remember—”

“Back when they said it was haunted?” Derek says. When Peter doesn’t reply, just stares at him as if he’s suddenly grown another head, Derek feels less triumphant and more like he just should stop trying. “I don’t hate history, all right? It’s just if you think I can remember all those dates and names the way you do, and Laura _cheats_ at that, she swiped one of great-grandmother’s claws—”

“Did she now,” Peter says abruptly. He drums his fingers along the top of the book, pressing his lips together. Then he shrugs off whatever he’d been about to do and just leans against the wall again, tilting the map towards Derek. “Well, she’s your mother’s problem right now, not mine, and if Talia doesn’t use all her new free time to find out a few things about her…anyway. Yes, they used to say it was haunted, but then the army cleared it out and built that garrison, and it’s been nice and quiet ever since. Supposedly.”

Derek is starting to see where this is going. “I don’t think you told Mom we were going to poke around in all that magic stuff you like.”

“Because we’re not, Derek, we’re just wondering what started up all those stories again,” Peter says, tone withering. He starts to shut the book again, then changes his mind and flattens it out and jabs his finger at part of it. “See this? What is this? You can read that much, can’t you?”

Actually, Derek’s a better reader than either of his sisters, but Derek just swallows that one and looks at the map. “It’s…another pass?”

“Yes,” Peter says. He looks a little mollified, though he’s still using that sarcastic voice. “Too narrow for a road, at least for regular people, but werewolves have used it since before there were kings and armies out here. It’s very useful, a back door around that garrison in plain sight, and yet no pack has ever claimed it. Odd, isn’t it?”

“If I say yes, are you going to say we should go see if it’s haunted, too?” Derek says. To be honest, he’s already resigning himself to a detour into one of those eerie, unpleasant places Peter seems to love so much.

“Well, I think just for caution’s sake, we should spend some time seeing how far these stories have spread.” Peter drums his fingers along the top of the book again. Oddly enough, he doesn’t look that excited, though he’s clearly settled on his plan. “This isn’t pack land but that means if anything is coming through the pass—either one—nobody’s going to be around to stop it, or even howl, before it hits the Blackwoods. And you know they’ll call up Talia if that happens.”

Derek makes a face. “They’re always calling her for help.”

“That’s because she’s _the_ alpha, Derek. ” After a last glance at the map, Peter shuts the book. He looks at it for a few seconds, pursing his lips, and then snorts and puts it away and pushes himself up towards the bed. “Well, and their alpha has a stupid crush on her…anyway, I want to see if that other pass is still clear or not.”

The room’s so small that Peter doesn’t have to do more than roll onto his knees before his hand’s touched the edge of the bed. He pulls himself up onto it, then crawls to one end and starts fluffing up the sheets. Derek stays on the floor a little longer, making sure that the bags are all there, and then he gets up. He stands up so he can blow out the lantern, then gets on the bed too.

He's just gotten his legs under the blankets when Peter catches him by the shoulder. Peter hasn’t switched to were-sight, even with how dark it is in the room, and his eyes are just a glimmering hint in the black oval that’s his face. “No protests?” he says, voice lilting like he’s joking.

Derek knows he’s not. “It’s not like I have any ideas about where else to go,” he finally says, because he also knows Peter wants an answer. “I guess if you want to, at least one of us does.”

Peter lets go of him, but stays propped up on elbows as Derek squirms down onto the mattress. The bed’s just about wide enough for the two of them, with no margin for error, and Derek hisses as his knees knock into Peter but the other man doesn’t move. Not till Derek’s all the way down, and then Peter finally reaches over him, flipping the blankets up. And then putting one hand down on Derek’s chest; his thumb and two fingers land on Derek’s collarbone, inside Derek’s shirt, and they’re warm and unexpectedly soft.

“If you want to go home,” Peter says. Right into Derek’s ear, so the scent of his breath washes up over Derek’s face in a warm wave, his voice rich with contempt. “If you can’t—”

“It was—” Derek’s twisted over before he can catch himself. His hand comes down on Peter, not on the bed; it’s too dark and he missed and Peter grunts, and instinct is pounding Derek’s head anyway for holding himself over the other man, the older one, the senior one. It’s beating him so even though he can’t really _see_ the room, he thinks it’s spinning around him, and yet, for all that, he’s still so flared up with anger he can’t listen to it. “I _told_ her to just let me go. It was my idea in the first place, I just waited because she—”

There’s the click of teeth coming together, solid menace for all its shapelessness in the dark. Then the seed of a growl, rattling Derek’s bones as he flinches back. He’d drop entirely, except suddenly a vise of a grip has locked around his arm. “You’re her _son_ , you idiot. If she threw _you_ out, then what does that say to the rest of the pack? No, I’ll tell you, it says none of us are safe, and that’s a fine state for us.”

“I know.” Derek jerks at his arm, uselessly, barely even forcing Peter to move with it. If he really wanted to push it—maybe. He’s been packing on muscle lately, so even Peter’s stopped calling him a beanpole. But he doesn’t want to fight family, never has. He just can’t help his temper sometimes. “I know, what, isn’t that why you agreed to this anyway?”

Peter’s silent for a long second. His fingers twitch a little around Derek’s bicep, and then wriggle into the crooked elbow without loosening up. “I agreed…”

“So nobody would look at you next, and say it’s about time,” Derek mutters. No, he’s not going to start a fight. First, they’re in the middle of an inn, and second, Peter has most of their money. And third, he’s just tired all of a sudden. Well, he already was tired—the anger covered it up but that’s dying out now.

He goes to lie down, but Peter hauls him up again. There’s enough force in it that Derek stiffens, then jerks his other arm up across himself, ready to block any blows. But when Peter speaks again, he doesn’t sound mad. Like he doesn’t understand a word Derek’s just said, sure, but that’s normal. “Well, shouldn’t I have stayed put, if I was worried about that?”

“I don’t know,” Derek says, after a second of working his jaw. He tries to shrug off Peter again. Peter loosens up but still keeps his hand on Derek’s arm. “Maybe you just—it’s just not getting thrown out. I don’t know, one second you’re complaining how we never get to visit like other packs, the next you’re ratting out Laura for wandering into town without asking Mom—”

“You’re still so protective of her,” Peter says, and then he laughs nastily.

“She’s my sister.” Derek pulls a last time and finally gets his arm free, though he ends up swinging so close that his forehead bumps into Peter’s face. “You and Mom—”

“Your _mother_ never forgot to point out a hunter to me,” Peter says, suddenly sharp. His breath puffs in closer, like he might—and then he pushes away. Throws his arm over Derek’s back and uses it to lever Derek down, too. “If it was just about leaving, I could’ve done that before, Derek. For that matter, I could’ve taken _you_ into town, if you’d ever bothered to let me know you were actually interested in something besides romping around in the mud.”

The bed creaks and sways a little under them, moving with Peter as he plops down, then grunts and heaves himself over. His arm falls across Derek’s back again. On accident, Derek thinks, until Peter sighs and pulls him down, and tosses a leg over him too. Derek feels Peter’s jaw digging into the side of his brow and jerks his head out of the way, and suddenly his uncle’s head is pressed against his breast, hair bunching up under his chin to tickle at his gorge while Peter’s puffs of breath slowly balloon out the front of his shirt.

“You never said that, and you hate it when I ask you for things,” Derek says after a second. He feels…like he needs to fix this, even though he doesn’t want to. It’s just he’s used to the opposite way around, his head under Peter’s chin—he _was_ used to that, anyway. Peter hasn’t done that for years, not since Derek shot up taller than him.

Peter’s head moves, like he might lift it, and then he just moves it sideways to lie against Derek’s shoulder. “I hate questions when you’re not _paying attention_ ,” he says, just before jabbing his elbow into Derek’s back. “Now if you’re not going to run home, let me get some sleep. I need to figure out how we’re going to get over to that other pass.”

Derek…keeps his mouth shut. Works his head down to his share of the pillow, and when he thinks Peter might have drifted off, his foot out from under Peter’s leg.

The moment it’s free, Peter’s hand comes up and grabs the back of Derek’s neck. His heartbeat’s barely sped up—sometimes Derek hates that about him, how hard it is to tell when Peter’s worked up or not—and he doesn’t smell angry, but Derek sucks in his breath and holds as still as possible. And finally Peter exhales, maybe a little longer than normal, and his fingers slide off Derek. A second later, he twists over onto his back and his arm falls off from around Derek.

It starts to fold up again when Derek, still mostly holding his breath, cautiously pushes forward into the freed-up space. Derek stops and Peter lets out a definite sigh, his arm dropping, and then lets Derek pillow down on his shoulder.

* * *

Peter’s up before sunrise the next day, which says how excited he is. He doesn’t wake Derek up and all the packs are gone, so when Derek does roll out of bed and see the empty room, he panics for a few seconds before thankfully catching Peter’s voice coming over from the stable.

“Here,” Peter says, handing him a hunk of bread with the center stuffed with cheese when he comes out. “I already loaded up the horse, so if you want to stick your head in the well, you’ve got time.”

“Aren’t we just going to get dusty again?” Derek says. He balls up the bread and tries to stuff it into his mouth, not wanting to give Peter a reason to call him a foot-dragger. But the crust is too hard and he ends up having to bite off a chunk.

Peter looks him up and down, and then sighs and pulls off a waterskin from the packhorse. “Don’t choke,” he says, holding onto the skin till Derek’s squirted a drink from it. “The wagon-driver’s still only halfway through breakfast inside, and from the sound of it, he expects that to come with a side of housemaid.”

“Wagon?” Derek says, looking up and around. They’re not the only ones up this early and one merchant train is already geeing their oxen onto the road, kicking up enough dust that he turns his back to them to keep it off his food.

“Skinners,” Peter says, nodding at a smaller wagon standing in front of the inn. “They go back and forth along the mountains, buying from the sheepherders who live up there.”

Derek looks up.

“Yes, sheep.” Peter shrugs and then swivels around as something inside the inn catches his ear. “Let’s go inspect a flock or two, shall we? It’s always been a fantasy of mine to lead out a flock of those dear, adorable, fluffy little creatures.”

It makes sense, for Peter. At the same time Derek has to grab for the skin and drain a quarter of it to keep from coughing up the bread. He can feel Peter looking at him with disapproval but he just keeps his head down and drinks. And eats—if Peter’s feeling generous enough to save him food, he’s pretty sure he’s going to be miserable for the rest of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In actual packs, non-alpha wolves don't stay forever. When they get old enough, they usually peacefully separate from the pack and go off to start their own pack, unlike the constant dominance fights that the show portrays. 
> 
> For this story, Peter is older than Derek, but I picture them as being only a few years apart, going more by how they look in the flashbacks than by the ages of their present-day actors.


	2. Chapter 2

The skinner wagon heads along the main road for only a mile or so, and then it turns off onto a smaller, rougher road. One that clearly doesn’t get maintained as often, with the drainage ditches on either side soon petering out and letting the trees grow right up to the roadside. In some places, the tree roots push up into the middle of the road and force the skinners out to curse and cut tree branches to use as levers to get the wheels over them.

Derek and Peter help out once, so they don’t stand out, and then Peter decides that since they can go faster, they should. The skinners don’t seem too resentful about it, though one wishes them good luck in a sarcastic way, and another calls out that they’d better not overshoot the next inn or they’ll be stuck outside at night.

“What are they talking about?” Derek asks when they’re out of earshot of the wagon. “I don’t even smell any other werewolves around here.”

“Mmm,” is all Peter says, though he’s sniffing around too.

The traffic on this road is much less frequent, and dies out completely once they pass a village that’s more a couple shacks hoping for somebody to stumble in and drop some coins. Here and there a thin line of smoke issues out from further up the mountainside, showing that the land isn’t totally uninhabited, but that’s about the only sign Derek can find. He doesn’t even get a whiff of the sheep that supposedly roam around.

“It’s summer, they’re probably pasturing further up,” Peter says.

“Why?” Derek asks.

Peter glances over irritably, and then just jerks at the packhorse’s rein. He stalks forward two feet and then lets out a yelp as he comes unexpectedly to the end of the rein; when he looks back, the horse glowers at him, head dropped, lips peeled back from its teeth, forelegs ramrod straight and planted firmly where it is. He drops the rein and rubs his palm against his hip—Derek just glimpses a fading red burn—and snarls at the horse.

The horse just drops its head even lower. They’re well-off enough to afford horses bred specifically to stand werewolves, and any pack animal who doesn’t mind a werewolf shouldn’t mind anything else, short of a dragon. But this one doesn’t look like it plans on budging any time soon.

“It’s been off for a while,” Derek says, when it looks like Peter also won’t be moving. “Scent keeps getting all sour.”

At first Peter doesn’t react, but then his nostrils flare. He straightens up, still glaring at the horse. “And you didn’t say anything because…”

“Well, because I thought we were in a hurry somewhere. You kept lunging off.” Derek looks at the road behind them, hearing some birds flapping—at least, he thinks they’re birds, but when they clear the brush, their wings have the scalloped edges of bats. He frowns and looks up and only then realizes how late it’s gotten. “I figured we were trying to make that inn they were talking about.”

“Derek, we passed the damn inn hours ago,” Peter says.

Then he stalks past Derek, ignoring any kind of protest Derek might put up. He goes down the road a few yards, occasionally kicking at the dirt, and then comes back and goes up the road the same distance. Then he puts his hands on his hips and exhales in annoyance, staring at the overgrown track.

“Don’t tell me a horse can sense something we can’t,” Peter says. It seems to be mostly to himself.

The horse lifts its head and Derek darts forward to grab the dropped rein, thinking it might bolt. It doesn’t; it just stands there, still looking mulish. And uneasy, Derek thinks. Its tail has started whipping from side to side like a nervous dog’s.

“What are you looking for?” Derek ends up asking, when Peter just keeps staring at the road. “ _Were_ you looking for something? Where is this pass?”

Peter doesn’t answer him, though a couple seconds later, the other man abruptly turns off into the side of the road. He bends over and starts tugging at the weeds growing into the road.

Derek bites his lip and tells himself, while staring at his uncle’s ass, that Peter would murder him slowly, with lots of mind-numbing historical references, if he shoves the man over. Then he turns around to stop thinking about that, period, and just…he looks at the mountaintops, then back at the woods around them. They’re…quiet, he guesses, considering how lush the foliage looks, but he can still smell wildlife around, and catch the occasional fluttering heartbeat. Nothing looks out of place.

The horse is nervous but it’s not scared stiff. When he gives it a poke in the haunches, it whuffs in irritation—Peter looks up with what might be a hopeful expression—but doesn’t rear up or kick out. Peter goes back to his weeding with a disgruntled snort, while Derek just…feels like he’s sympathizing with the horse more than he should.

“Maybe it’s tired,” he mutters. He’s talking to himself but Peter shifts towards him and he raises his voice. “Where were we going to stop, if we skipped the inn? Just outside?”

“It’s only been a couple days, you can’t have gone soft already,” Peter says. He’s working at a very deep-rooted weed, to the point that he’s had to wrap both hands around it and brace his foot near the base of its stem.

“I’m not—I’m just asking— _you’re_ the one who always complains about being better than a hole in the ground,” Derek says, irritated. He whaps the end of the rein against his knee, then throws back his shoulders and goes up to the horse and starts going through the packs.

Peter glances over and he clearly doesn’t like what Derek’s doing, but he doesn’t say anything. Just keeps working at that weed, while Derek ends up pulling a couple packs off the horse so he can get to the one that he thinks has the book with the map in it. If Peter won’t tell him, he _can_ read, and he can at least figure out where they are and how far they are from the pass, and whether Peter’s letting his obsession drive them all to the brink of exhaust—

Something crashes into the underbrush, so close Derek nearly drops the book to clap his hands over his ears. It’s that loud, and that big—it sounds like a boulder dropped onto the trees, or something equally disastrous, and half-deafened by it, Derek doesn’t hear the horse whinnying till its hoof lashes into his shoulder.

Instinct makes him whirl and slash out as he falls. His claws hook into hide but even as he’s yanking it towards himself, he realizes it’s not the horse: skin’s too loose, shifts too much. He’s got the bags. Some of them.

The rest are still strapped to the horse and go with it as it bolts off down the road. There’s a frustrated hiss and then Derek sees the long, dark shape of Peter, full-shifted, streaking after the horse. Family blood, not instinct, makes Derek stagger up onto one knee, but by then Peter and the horse have nearly crested the next hill and even if Derek goes to wolf form, he knows he won’t be able to catch up to them.

Besides—there was that thing in the brush. He drops back into a crouch over the packs, nudging them under him and between his legs as he swivels in place, straining all his senses. It’s not quite sunset, but it’s dark enough that he switches to were-sight.

Couple birds. A squirrel, flattened against a trunk. Voles and mice frozen in place, as if they are all sensing some kind of predator, even though the loudest heartbeat Derek can hear is his own. He can’t pick up anything bigger than that squirrel. He starts to wonder if maybe it was just a branch or a tree falling, and then remembers that that wouldn’t make the wildlife keep still for this long. Especially the birds.

Still, he can’t tell what it is, and he’s out on the road, in the most open space for probably miles around. He can feel the backs of his shoulders prickling, but he makes himself move slowly, slipping his hands through the bag straps and winding those around his arms, and then, when those are secured, he starts shuffling back towards the side of the road opposite the crashing noise.

A loud, exasperated howl floats into the air: Peter, curtly saying he’s coming back. He lost the horse, Derek thinks, and winces because if he only has three bags, then most of Peter’s books must still be on the horse and Peter once mauled out an omega’s eye for ripping out a page from—Derek freezes.

Peter howls again, even more irritably, demanding to know where Derek is, but Derek keeps his mouth shut. He has to. If he makes any noise, the thing will see him.

He didn’t even hear it come up. It’s on the same side of the road as him, barely a yard and a half away, and at its size, with those monstrously long arms that hang nearly to its knees. Well, Derek thinks they’re knees. It’s mostly human-shaped, but it stands almost twice as tall as a man, and its silhouette is strangely crooked, as if its back and shoulders are deformed. And it moves slowly, with jerky movements—it’s not a were. Even weres stuck in shift move better than that. And that’s when Derek realizes the thing doesn’t have a heartbeat or a scent, and isn’t breathing either.

A third howl splits the air, much closer and more urgent. There’s a worried note in it that makes Derek tilt his head, but he still can’t answer. All he can do is watch as the gigantic thing twists towards the sound, lifting hands that have odd, stubby fingers, which are all the wrong length, the middle ones far shorter than the index fingers. It holds still for a few seconds and then it—disappears.

It just disappears. It’s like somebody dropped a curtain over it. It disappears and Derek’s still staring at where it’d been when he’s suddenly shaken by the arm. He jerks up, snarling, and Peter grabs his hands and rolls him over onto his back, and then smacks the side of his head. “What is the _matter_ with you?” Peter hisses, eyes glowing so bright that Derek’s tearing up. “Do you _want_ me to leave you behind? When I—”

“There was—” Derek grunts, struggling to point at the spot where the thing had been. “I saw—”

Peter isn’t listening to him. The other man’s already sat back and is staring along the road again, and Derek can just make out a bitter expression on his face. “Well, of course,” he mumbles, raking one hand back through his hair. “Can’t just have _one_ damned thing go my way, no, the horse has to lose its mind and these woods have to have brush like a fishing net, and my _books_ , all that time I spent wrapping them in oilskin, I’ll just have to hope the stupid beast doesn’t drown itself in a wallow…”

“It didn’t have a heartbeat,” Derek hisses. “Peter, would you just—get off, it just—I don’t know where it went—”

“What?” Peter frowns, turning back to him. “Where what went?”

And that’s when something sweeps Peter off of Derek. The whites of Peter’s rounded, shocked eyes flash, and then he’s gone, bouncing off a tree on the other side of the road. Derek’s already rolled himself up on his feet but he’s torn between retreating towards his uncle, who’s wheezing—there’s blood-scent in the air, pushing the fur out across Derek’s raised hackles—and charging the huge thing looming over him.

One of its giant fists comes down as if to hammer in Derek’s skull. He dodges, but then gets tangled up in one of the packs, and by the time he kicks that off, it’s trying to smash him again. Peter roars from the side and Derek skitters, then snatches up a bag and flings it at the thing.

The bag just bounces off, and gets underfoot as Derek tries to back away. He trips over it and is frantically scrabbling back to his feet when a cold, _cold_ hand wraps around his ankle. It’s colder than _ice_ , its touch so numbing that when, panicked, he shifts to wolf and his skinnier leg slips through its fingers, he’s shocked his leg doesn’t shatter upon hitting the ground.

But he doesn’t wait for that. He hops sideways, then whirls around as—the road—it’s empty again. He doesn’t know where it is. He doesn’t know where it _is_. He can’t smell it or hear it and it—

“Derek. _Derek_.” Peter follows up his hiss with a peremptory bark. “Bags. Now.”

It takes a moment for Derek to remember what a bag is, panic has driven him so deep into the wolf. He shakes himself, sees a bag lying under him, and then drops his shift and grabs it. Then he remembers Peter—he can still smell blood. “Are you—”

“Shut up and get over here,” Peter snaps. “And bring those, and get—just get over here.”

Derek does that, and finds Peter struggling to sit up, one arm wrapped around his side, though Peter won’t let Derek look him over. Instead Peter slaps the bags onto Derek’s back and then pulls them both off the road. “Den,” Peter grunts, just before flopping over and twisting back to a wolf.

The blood smell thickens, but it’s not so heavy that Derek could say Peter shouldn’t move. And Peter can walk, even if he’s listing to one side, and anyway, Derek doesn’t want to stick around either, even if he doesn’t know where—or what—Peter bites his leg, then snarls at him.

He snarls back, but he takes off into the woods. He’s making too much noise but they don’t have time to be quiet. They don’t even know how to avoid the thing because they don’t know what it is—Derek doesn’t, anyway. He hopes Peter does. Peter’s telling him what to do and not hesitating and he just hopes that if he listens, that’ll do it and they’ll get away from the thing. It’s not like he can think of anything else, anyway.

They plunge deeper and deeper into the forest. They’re on the upwards slope, though Derek’s so busy spinning around to check their backs that it takes him a while to realize it, and that happens right when Peter bites him again to stop him. At the edge of a stream—an oxbow bend, where the twist of the water has thrown up a pile of driftwood and other rubbish. Part of the pile is matted over with mud and Derek thinks maybe a beaver had been working at it, at some point.

Anyway, it’s something to put their backs against, and the stream’s wide enough that they’ll hear if anything tries to cross over it; the things might not have a heartbeat, but if they’re solid enough to grab him, they’re solid enough to make splashes. He wades across and scrambles up onto the little bit of land within the oxbow. Drops the bags and he’s started to scoop out a hollow against the driftwood pile when he realizes Peter’s still across the stream.

Derek looks up just in time to catch the pained way Peter’s mouth twists around his muzzle. Then Peter shifts human and flops across the water. He’s moving sluggishly, but once he gets up onto dry ground, he slaps away Derek’s hand. “Already healed,” he mutters. “Just dig.”

So Derek goes back to digging. Peter drops into a hunch besides him, panting heavily. A few minutes pass, and Peter grunts and pushes out one hand to clutch a few dirt clods. He tosses them over the water, then grunts again and gets onto his knees, and digs next to Derek.

* * *

They spend a miserable night crouched in their ditch and keeping watch for the thing, and when morning comes, it just makes everything look worse. Their clothes are in tatters and Derek has to pull out a couple nails because they’re too mangled from digging to heal properly. Peter’s got dried blood smeared over one side, from his waist up into his hair, and he keeps poking at his ribs till he finally gets tired of Derek’s staring and mutters something about preferring a break over a dislocation, with how long it takes for the soreness to go away.

And then Derek goes to relieve himself, and while he’s doing that, he realizes he’s got a mark on his ankle where the thing grabbed him. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t look like a bruise either—it’s the wrong color, a faded grey, not like the blood in the flesh has welled up but like it’s been drained out.

When he comes back and shows Peter, his uncle just sits there for a few seconds, chewing his lip. Peter’s quiet enough that he doesn’t even protest when Derek pulls aside his shirt, trying to see if there’s any similar marks on him—there is a faint one, right at Peter’s waist, shaped like a fingertip, but it’s not as clear as the one on Derek.

“My shirt was in the way, I think,” Peter finally says. He inhales sharply as if to go on, and then turns around instead, reaching for the bags. Then his hand freezes and he stares down at them.

“We could track the horse,” Derek offers. He shakes some twigs out of his hair and surveys the land around them. “It’s daytime now, and what they were all saying—day’s fine. And it can’t have gone that far, right? It’s too hilly.”

Peter is still staring at the bags. Then he slowly pulls his hand back, curling it up against his belly. “Even if we found it, I didn’t bring that one with me,” he mutters.

“Well, at least we’d have clothes and money and food,” Derek snaps. He’s edgy. He’s short of sleep and filthy and hungry, and honestly, downright terrified. If Peter asked right now whether he wanted to go home, he…he’d probably say yes. He’ll put up with the rest of the pack ignoring him when they aren’t muttering about how much of a danger he is, so long as he never has to see that thing again. “Do we even know where we are?”

“We’ve got a map…wait.” Peter looks at the bags again. Then starts pawing through them, with an increasingly worried tinge to his scent. “Were you—weren’t you taking it out—”

“Oh. Oh, right.” Derek steps back from the stream, towards Peter. Then swivels away from what’s going to be a truly spectacular rage. And a well-deserved one, too, because of course Derek would drop the book with the map in it. “Shit.”

He cringes and waits, but Peter…does not yell at him. Doesn’t even smack at him, and when Derek finally risks a look, he finds Peter away from the books and…looking at his ankle again. Derek shifts and that’s when Peter finally moves: to grab his calf and hold him still as Peter sniffs up and down the mark.

“It’s not black rot, I don’t think,” Peter mutters. He frowns and runs his fingertip over the mark. “Flesh seems sound enough, it’s just…I wish we’d looked at this when it was fresh. I don’t have anything to compare to see if it’s fading.”

“Does it matter if my foot falls off if we don’t know where we are?” Derek says.

He’s sharp about it, but not because he’s mad at Peter; he’s mad at himself for losing their map. But he doesn’t get the chance to explain that before Peter jolts up onto his feet, eyes blazing blue, yanking Derek towards him by the shoulder. “I’m _trying_ —” Peter hisses, and here’s the outrage, Derek thinks.

But then Peter breaks off and lets him go. The other man pivots away, pulling at his hair and stalking back and forth in front of the few packs they managed to keep. He makes low, angry noises to himself, but if he’s actually saying something, Derek can’t make out what it is. Then he stops. Looks at Derek, over his shoulder, and his expression is so odd…it almost looks like he thinks _Derek_ is the one who’s going to have the fit.

“Look,” Peter says, taking a deep breath. He comes back over, one hand awkwardly out, and he’s never awkward. Or unsure about touching Derek, but it takes him a couple seconds before he finally prods Derek’s arm with his finger. “We need to eat and get _actual_ shelter.”

“What about the horse?” Derek says. “And your—the rest of your books?”

“To hell with the horse, and I hope it gets eaten by that thing. It’s clearly not got any intelligence we want to perpetuate, does it?” Peter snaps.

Derek is going to ask about the books again, but he stops himself. Peter glances at the packs, and at the corner of one book sticking out, and a kind of forlorn look crosses his face, but it’s just for a second. Then he squares up his shoulders and points back towards the road.

“If we keep parallel to that, we won’t get lost, but we obviously can’t walk right on the road. We know it’ll attack there,” Peter says, sounding a lot closer to his usual self. “We’ll backtrack through the woods till we get to the last inn and have some space to think this through properly.”

“Okay,” Derek says. “Okay. That sounds like it’ll work.”

* * *

For some reason, finding their way back takes them hours. Derek didn’t think they ran that far from the road, or that the underbrush was so difficult to work through, but apparently both of those are true because it’s past noon by the time they can just glimpse the road through the trees. So they can’t get very far along it before they have to peel off and find shelter again, since the one thing they know is that night-time isn’t safe.

Well, two things now—the woods don’t seem to have any wildlife bigger than a rabbit, and they’re so skittish that they dive down their holes the moment Derek and Peter come within earshot. And Peter’s leery about picking any berries or plants, something about corrupting influences. “You can see it in the roots sometimes,” he explains, for once. “Something that grows in a cursed place will have deformities. And depending on the curse, it could pass it on to anything that eats it.”

“Is that why you were yanking up that weed?” Derek asks.

Peter blinks as if he’s completely forgotten he had done that. Then he shakes his head. “No, that was just to see…this road’s too overgrown, didn’t you notice? The weeds are so deep it’s like they’ve been growing in it for _years_ , and if there are still sheep flocks here, you’d think they’d come down at least once a year to market.”

That’s when Derek’s stomach growls, cutting off anything he’d have to say, even if he could think of something Peter wouldn’t make fun of. He grimaces and pushes his arm over his belly, hoping that it wasn’t so loud Peter had heard—no, Peter heard, and he’s making a frustrated face about it, as if Derek hasn’t tried his best to do something about the fact that they haven’t eaten all day.

But “we haven’t checked the streams for fish,” is all Peter says. He’s been unusually short on sarcasm, and every so often, Derek thinks he might catch a worried look on the other man’s face.

If it didn’t make Derek feel like he’s regressed from the family shame to the family dead weight, he’d appreciate the lack of sniping. As it is, he just keeps tight to Peter’s heels and keeps his ears and eyes open for any sign of something to eat.

They find a stream easily enough, but it’s too shallow for decent-sized fish. It’s also running the wrong way, but after some pacing around, Peter decides they should backtrack a little bit just to see if it widens up, or at least leads them to a better place to spend the night than another woodpile.

Actually, they find a big stone building.

The stream takes a sharp turn around a gigantic rock outcrop, but since they can climb, they go over the rock, and suddenly they’re staring down at something that makes Derek scratch himself to check that he’s not dreaming.

His leg bleeds. And down below is a long, low, solid-looking stone building, a bit like a farmhouse but more squashed-looking than the ones in the valleys. The building abuts the outcrop on one side, while on the other three, split-rail fences form large paddocks, and in the paddocks are small, fluffy, white, contented-looking sheep chewing their cud.

“They smell real,” Peter says from beside Derek. He sounds just as disbelieving.

“Why can’t we smell them when we’re on the other side of the rock?” Derek asks, stiffening up as the full realization rolls through his mind. “Or hear them? And the wind’s all wrong, we should be able to…”

Peter sniffs experimentally, as if he’s actually listening to Derek for once. But then the growling of a stomach makes him grimace, then toss his head. “Well, can’t see from here,” he mutters. “Do be quiet, would you?”

Derek winces and puts his hand over his belly, watching as Peter starts easing himself over the edge and down the sheep-facing side of the outcrop. This side is much steeper and he’s so intent on where Peter is finding handholds that he almost misses it when his gut muscles twist under him. But then he realizes that the growl of his stomach is completely different from the growl that’d happened a few seconds ago, so that must have been…

By the time he catches up with Peter at the bottom of the rocks, Peter’s ducked into a tuffet of knee-high grass. Peter growls a warning over Derek’s inhale, then stretches out his arm and hooks Derek just as a door opens up in the side of the building, spilling out warm yellow light and a faint whistling.

He doesn’t have to tell Derek to shut up then, though his hand stays pressed heavily against Derek’s back as they watch a figure exit the building and walk casually into the nearest paddock. A man, Derek thinks, and then the figure stumbles, both arms going up to flail, and Derek almost corrects himself before getting a good whiff. He’s young but he _is_ older than Derek. On the tall side, with skinny wrists sticking out of his cloak and short hair, too dark for a blond but there’s not enough light for Derek to make out its color with any certainty.

The man rights himself with the help of a long staff with a curved top, and then bats irritably at the edge of his cloak. “Stop looking like that, like you didn’t fall face-first into the manger the other day. Yeah, I saw that. I see all, fluffball, that’s why they call me the shepherd.”

The sheep turn their heads, then shuffle around as he talks to them. Between his hunger pains and the rapidly-increasing darkness, Derek’s probably imagining things, but they seem confused.

The shepherd sighs. “Whatever. Come on, beddie-snuggle time, you know the drill,” he says, waving his staff towards the building.

If Derek squints, he can just make out a bunch of hay and wooden walls inside the door. There’s a second, smaller door near the other end of the building, plus a handful of windows that are all tightly shuttered. And—he almost pushes himself up before catching himself—the shutters are metal. The man went through the trouble of dragging up metal shutters from the valley; nobody does that kind of metalworking any closer than that.

“Stay still,” Peter mutters. “Obviously, magic.”

“Do you see what he’s done?” Derek mutters back.

Peter stifles an exasperated noise in the grass. “It’s not like a sign, Derek, you can’t just go around expecting to see big bright—”

They both shut up as the shepherd starts moving again, in their direction. It doesn’t _seem_ like the shepherd’s heard them—if he has, he’s not human on top of the magic—and he’s still talking to the sheep, shooing them towards the barn with flaps of his hand and the occasional wave of his staff. The sheep don’t seem too concerned about the staff, Derek notes.

All the same, they trot off towards the barn with surprising speed. It’s…not quite like they’re afraid. Their heartbeats are steady and clearly none of this is a surprise to them, and _clearly_ , none of them want to linger.

“…four, shut the door. Five, six, leave those hicks. Seven, eight, don’t be late. Nine, ten…” the shepherd yawns, then turns in after one last sheep and starts trudging back to the barn “…ten…um, something about I never thought I’d say this, but man, I’d kill just for a parrot or something. You guys never talk.”

The sheep looks back at the shepherd, then slows down till he catches up. He reaches down to pat at its haunch and it…rubs up against his leg, a little like a dog.

“No, I love you too, I just have other needs, okay? And I know, want a conversation, maybe I should try something that doesn’t have to devote several hours a day to re-chewing its food,” the shepherd sighs, disappearing into the barn. There are some shuffling noises and then the door bangs shut.

Peter keeps Derek pushed down for a couple more minutes, till the glimmering around the shutters closest to the barn door suddenly goes away. Then he bounds up in wolf form and before Derek can even ask, he’s gone over to sniff and paw at the paddock fence. The spot doesn’t seem to give him anything useful and he moves on almost immediately, working his way along the fence so by the time Derek catches up, he’s nearly ten yards away.

Derek isn’t so well-versed in magic as Peter is—probably nobody short of a druid is—but he knows what to look for, and he doesn’t find anything either: no symbols carved or painted on the wood, no weird smells, no tingle along his skin. Just sheep smell.

Lots of sheep smell, to the point that he has to stop and crouch as his empty belly roils painfully. Up ahead, Peter lets out an irritated huff, but keeps working along the fence. He’s almost to a gate.

The last of the sun disappears behind the mountaintops. It won’t be full dark for a little longer, but not much, and they still don’t have anywhere to spend the night—Derek barks quietly at Peter, but the other man ignores him. They haven’t seen any trace of that thing from last night, but then, they hadn’t been able to tell if it’d been coming close or not…Derek swings his head from side to side, then braces himself to go annoy Peter into paying attention.

And then, just as he’s turning around, he spots something white at the edge of the paddock. The ground dips there, making a shallow ditch lined with a tangle of brush before it rises up again towards the fence, and struggling out of the ditch is a lone, weakly-bleating sheep. It must have dozed off and been hidden behind the brush.

Peter’s at Derek’s shoulder, so suddenly that Derek snaps his ears and tail down, thinking the man’s come to snarl and spit. But no, Peter’s intent on the sheep, a little bit of slaver hanging from his tongue, which is poking out of his open jaws. He bumps Derek with his hip, jerks his head over to indicate Derek should take the flank and circle out to come over the fence from the sheep’s other side, and then wiggles belly-down into the grass.

The sheep finally pulls itself free of the weeds and stands on wobbly legs, clearly nervous. It turns towards the barn and bleats loudly, then turns around to face the mountain.

By then Peter and Derek are both in position. It’s not ideal since they’ll be running _towards_ the barn—getting into the paddock through the gate would take too long—but if they time the jumps right, the sheep should flee from one straight into the jaws of the other.

Derek shifts his weight back onto his haunches, feeling their muscles coil tight as he listens to Peter’s heartbeat speed up, then slow down. When Peter’s about to go, there’ll be a stagger in it, he knows, and he’ll—

Clear the fence fine, but while he’s in the air, the barn door swings open again and the shepherd stands silhouetted in it. There’s something long and thin in the shepherd’s hand and Derek’s instincts scream _gun_ and by the time he comes down, he’s already wrenched himself aside to dive into that ditch. He uses the bush for cover as he tries to back up towards the fence.

Behind him there’s a loud thump and then a frantic scrabble—Peter must have managed to hook a paw on the top rail of the fence, and stop himself from even going over. Then the grass rustles as Peter scurries along till he’s right behind Derek, on the fence’s other side. The rails rattle as he hits them and Derek winces, then wonders why the man’s making such a racket. It’s not like it’ll get Derek to squirm backwards any faster.

In the meantime, the sheep has bolted across the paddock and is clattering up to the shepherd, who stoops down and moves his _staff_ out of the way so he can pick up the sheep. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” the shepherd says, hefting the sheep. “See something? I redid the whole fence just yesterday, even you can’t have licked off the salt already…”

The sheep goes limp in his arms. He holds it for a moment, continuing to ask it why it’s so upset. Then he turns around and disappears into the stable, and Derek sags in mixed relief and disappointment.

“Come on,” Peter hisses, having shifted to human at some point. “Get out of there, we need to dig a den before there’s no light left.”

Derek almost snaps that he’d been thinking about that already. But that’s not going to make Peter actually think he’s any more responsible, or put anything in his stomach, and so he just swallows it and twists around towards the fence.

He sees Peter’s face floating in the dark between the rails. Sees its eyes suddenly widen, and then Peter’s arm comes shooting under the bottom rail to slap at Derek, making him jerk aside just as something flies past his shoulder and thuds into the fence.

Both of them fall back. Then Derek whirls around, ignoring Peter’s hiss. The shepherd’s back in the doorway and holding onto a bulky, triangular-shaped thing: Derek thinks it’s a crossbow, after some squinting, but it’s very heavily-built for a handheld one.

“I should salt the firebreak again,” the shepherd says. He sounds less fussy than before, but he’s still offhanded, like he’s just talking to himself. “Well, really, it’s not a _firebreak_ firebreak, because trying to dig a trench in this soil is like dedicating yourself to eternal back pain, but the whole idea is the same. Get some buffer space between your actual property and those nasty things walking in the dark. I mean, the buffer’s probably going to keep most of them off, but I wouldn’t set up house in it, is all.”

Then he shuts the door. Derek stares at that black rectangle till the sound of Peter’s snapping teeth suddenly gets through to him. He shakes himself, then jumps the fence.

He starts off the second he lands, but Peter doesn’t. So Derek comes back and shifts human, and grabs Peter’s arm just as Peter picks up something from the grass.

“I think it’s roast bird,” Peter says, holding out the paper-wrapped bundle. A broken bit of crossbow bolt is dangling from the end of the string tied around it.

Derek opens his mouth to answer and smells it and it smells so good he nearly crumples to the ground. “We should go,” he makes himself say. “It’s almost night—”

“And a firebreak,” Peter goes on, frowning at the bundle. “A buffer…what buffer…salt? Actually, do you smell—”

“I smell meat,” Derek snaps. “Come on, what if that thing finds us?”

Peter’s head finally comes up. He smells irritated, but he doesn’t say anything. Just tucks the bundle under his arm and then goes with Derek back towards the rock outcrop, where they’ve left their bags.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this universe, clothes shift with werewolves, but when they shift back, the clothes look like they've been run around in.
> 
> From what I've been told by those with first-hand experience, a dislocated rib can be even more painful than a broken rib, since often the soft-tissue damage is worse, and every time you breathe, you're stretching the damaged cartilage, etc.
> 
> "Black rot" = gangrene.
> 
> Historically, crossbows come in many sizes, from assassin-pocket-handy to so big they have to be dragged by horses or oxen. The latter are technically referred to by other names, but Derek here isn't an expert in field artillery, so he just thinks of them as all being crossbows.
> 
> One of my mental subtitles for this might be something along the lines of, "Derek and Peter's (Not-so) Excellent Adventure."


	3. Chapter 3

They end up making camp at the bottom of the outcrop, just around the corner from the sheep farm. There’s a little overhang that gives them some protection from the wind, and also makes Derek feel safer even if he doesn’t know for sure that the thing from the other night _can’t_ go through rock. At any rate, it’s warmer than where they were sleeping before, and especially since Peter decides they can’t risk a fire.

“He doesn’t _know_ we’re staying nearby, so let’s keep it that way,” Peter reasons as they divide up the chicken. “We didn’t see any traces on the way up, clearly he doesn’t go out exploring.”

“Yeah, but he shot food at us. Why would he do that if he thinks we’ll just leave?” Derek asks.

Peter frowns and presses his lips together, and doesn’t answer. He’s been a lot less snippy about Derek’s questions and it’s making Derek nervous. And it’s even worse when Peter hands Derek the last piece of chicken and doesn’t even comment about ungratefulness. No, he just stares at the woods while absently rubbing the grease off his hands and onto the rock wall.

“It’s not even poisoned,” Derek ends up mumbling, just to hear _somebody_ talking.

“What, the chicken?” Peter says, still looking as if his mind’s miles away. “Derek, if he’s that good a shot with a crossbow, he wouldn’t need to bother with poison.”

“Well, so why would he just give us food?” Derek says. “He can’t have that much to spare. This place is at least two days’ walk for him from any trading post, and his flock’s tiny, what is he even using to pay for it?”

Peter starts up and Derek stuffs the chicken into his mouth, thinking that the other man’s about to go off, or maybe has seen something sneaking up on them. But after a moment’s squinting into the dark, Peter just sits back down. “Those are very good questions, actually,” he says, blinking. He rubs at his side. “Salt. Where have I heard that about salt…”

“Where would he get enough salt to just have lying around?” Derek says.

Now Peter starts to look annoyed. “Look, Derek, as much as I applaud your finally discovering the value of observation, you could also stand to learn the difference between noticing something and picking at it so much that you ruin any chance of under—”

He stops and looks at something past Derek’s shoulder. Derek turns around, but he just sees the wall—and then Peter’s suddenly sitting on _him_ , and pushing one hand down on his shoulder when he grunts and tries to wiggle away. And scratching at the rock, for some reason.

“Salt,” Peter says, licking his finger. He looks at his hand, then rubs it over the rock again before pushing his palm under Derek’s nose. “This is a salt deposit. _That’s_ where he’s getting it, and if he can purify it enough to sell—”

“But don’t you need a lot of water for that?” Derek says. When Peter looks down at him, he grimaces but keeps trying to elbow Peter off of him. “That one time, Mom took us by that saltpan, and they had a whole waterwheel to themselves. And they burn a lot of wood too, don’t they?”

Peter inhales, pauses, and then slides off Derek’s legs, though he stays in front of Derek. “Well, he doesn’t need to make it all the time. It’s probably seasonal. Maybe he goes somewhere else on the mountain to do it.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why he’s giving us _chicken_ ,” Derek says.

“Fine, I don’t _know_ ,” Peter suddenly spits at him. Then the other man shoves himself over, flopping back-first against the wall. He wraps one arm around himself and puts up his other hand to rub at his face, then glances irritably back at Derek. “He just decided he’d rather bribe off a wolf, I don’t know. Maybe that works for the thing that chased us too, and if we’d just thrown it some scraps, we’d still have my books and the stupid horse.”

Derek hadn’t thought about that. He’s not sure—but then, he’s not sure about anything that’s happened, and he knows Peter knows more than him. So he just doesn’t say anything.

Peter doesn’t either. They sit there in the dark and now that they aren’t talking, Derek can’t help but notice how quiet the mountainside is. It was that quiet before the thing had shown up and before Derek can help it, his skin is prickling and he’s holding his breath, even though—but that’s the problem. He _can’t_ tell if it’s out there or not.

“I think he was warning us,” Peter suddenly says.

“Did he…did he even see you?” Derek says. He sneaks a glance over at the other man and finds Peter with his knees pulled up to his chest. “Did he see—do you think he knows what we are?”

Peter shrugs and fiddles with a ragged tear in his trousers. Then he looks at Derek—at Derek’s foot, actually. He puts his arm out, pauses as Derek shifts away, and then lowers his hand to rest next to Derek’s foot. “Is that mark still on your ankle?”

“Haven’t checked,” Derek says, pulling at his trousers.

They both stare for a second, and then Peter sighs. Unfolds himself, only to scoot back as far as he can under the overhang. His head pushes up against Derek’s side, then shoulder, and then he starts prodding at Derek’s hip when he’s not tucking the bags up against them. “Too dark, check it in the morning,” he mutters.

“You think it’s okay to sleep?” Derek has to ask.

“Well, I think you pick more fights when you haven’t, and we’ve got enough of that without your amazing ability to find somebody to tick off in the middle of a desert,” Peter says. He tugs at Derek again, then lets out an irritated huff when Derek’s too slow about getting down by him. He still smells more worried than he sounds. “Lie down, would you? If something _is_ coming after us, it’s not like I can see it around your meaty shoulders.”

“Meaty—I’m not that—you know, if we keep eating this little, I’m going to go back to looking like a stick.” Derek does lie down, but he stays turned out to face the woods. “Laura says you’re mad I ended up taller.”

Peter snorts. He folds one arm over Derek’s shoulder and arm, and then leans onto it. If he’s really trying to fall asleep, it’s an awkward position; if he’s trying to keep watch, it’s a good position. “Your sister doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and if you’re really that worried about your weight, we’ll go look around in the morning. If he’s got one roast chicken, he’s got to have a chicken house somewhere. Even magic can’t make food out of nothing.”

“Fine,” Derek grunts, tucking his arms under himself.

He doesn’t want to fall asleep. Doesn’t think he _can_ , what with everything around him and his belly still only half-full—neither of them are small, when it comes down to it, and weres need more food than normal people anyway—but trying to make anything out of the shadowy trees strains his eyes. He keeps blinking them to relieve the ache, and his eyelids stay down longer and longer, and then he does end up sleeping.

* * *

When Derek wakes up again, it’s the grey hour before dawn and Peter’s gone.

Derek bolts up onto four legs, shifting in his alarm, only to nearly flop back onto his belly when he spots Peter just a little further down the mountain. Peter’s in wolf form and his head is hidden in the grass, and as Derek watches, he inches along like he’s got his nose glued to a trail on the ground. His heartbeat’s a little elevated but he doesn’t smell like he was recently in a fight or anything like that.

He left his clothes behind, neatly folded, with some fingermarks like he was trying to brush off the dirt. When several minutes pass and he doesn’t come back, Derek puts the clothes away in one of the bags. Then strips and does the same with his own clothes; they’re starting to smell, enough to increase the chances of another predator noticing them, and without soap it’s a lot easier to keep clean if he just shifts to wolf form and then grooms himself.

Which is what Derek’s doing when Peter finally looks up. Peter’s ears flick back and forth and then he gestures with his muzzle for Derek to come over.

Not that he waits for Derek. No, he keeps on sniffing down that trail, so by the time Derek makes it over, he’s led them around the outcrop and the farm’s outermost fences are just visible. No sheep are out yet and Derek doesn’t catch any sign of the shepherd either, but he still crouches low. Peter looks over and his tail lashes stiffly to the side, but then he goes down too. And then he keeps sniffing.

Derek pokes his nose in behind Peter, then sneezes as dirt suddenly comes flying up into it. Grumbling, Peter turns around—as if he hadn’t just _kicked_ that dirt at Derek’s face—and, ignoring Derek’s bared teeth, he uses his muzzle to thump Derek’s nose down into the scratched-up patch he’s made.

It’s dirt. Loosened up from Peter’s kicking but…Derek sniffs again, then gives one clod a tentative lick. Then he makes a face and scrubs his tongue off on a handy clump of grass, but he gets Peter’s point: salt’s been worked into the dirt.

He looks up and then around, only now noticing the thin bare line that’s snaking through the grass. It’s _very_ thin, so the blades growing on either side of it bush out enough to hide it, but once you push the grass away it’s clear enough. And it’s obviously been here a while, judging from how deep the salt taste goes in the soil.

Peter shifts human. “The buffer?” he says.

Derek looks at the line again, then shifts human himself so he can get the height to see. A stiff breeze has started up and it riffles the grass so he can’t trace the line more than a couple yards, not unless he gets up and follows it…but he watched Peter walking along it for enough and yeah, it does curve around the farm. “Salt? What good is that?”

“I think I read about it once,” Peter says, frowning. “I can’t remember…but salt, you use that like you would mountain ash. It’s a protective barrier.”

“Against _what_?” Derek says.

For a while Peter’s silent. His face wrinkles up several times as if he’s going to say something sharp, but then he’ll shake himself, or rub irritably at the side of his head. He finally goes to turn and then starts a little, seeing Derek; his expression goes briefly, surprisingly embarrassed.

“That’s the part I can’t remember,” Peter finally mutters. He goes to hands and knees again, and is hunching back to shift when he suddenly blows out his nose. “I smell like a peat bog. If we do find a chicken, we’ll probably have to stone it to death, because even with the wind right—”

“I think it was that oxbow,” Derek offers. “Lot of rotting wood.”

Peter stops and looks over, and then gives his hair a frustrated rake. “So much for observation,” he mutters. “Well, never mind, first things first and there’s a reason why they don’t put martyrs in charge of armies. Let’s get breakfast and then we’ll talk about what we’re doing.”

Before Derek can ask what he missed this time, Peter’s shifted back to wolf and is trotting off. Derek shifts but stays put for a second, pawing at the salty ground as he fights down his irritation. If Peter would ever just tell him what he’s _thinking_ , instead of acting like werewolves are supposed to have telepathy—

Peter barks peremptorily at him, then gives Derek an impatient jerk of the head. Biting back a huff, Derek shakes the dirt out of his claws and then hurries after the other man.

The two of them work around the farm. For a while they follow the salt line, which stands anywhere from a few to nearly fifty yards from the paddock fences, but then some noises in the barn start up and Peter detours farther down the mountain, so that the brush will hide them from view. Then they come up on the other side of the farm, which they hadn’t gotten to see last night.

The stone building looks like it’s been divided into two parts, the barn half and a living half, which has a massive chimney bulging out of its end. It’s far too big for the building and Derek’s just starting to wonder about that when he trips over a half-buried stone.

It’s smooth and rounded, and there are a couple more near it, placed so they clearly didn’t occur naturally. Part of a floor, at some point, so the building must have been bigger.

Peter nudges his shoulder and Derek pats the cobblestone with his paw, but Peter just gives it a brief glance and then continues edging them up towards the chimney. Derek can see why: there’s a window to one side of it, and the shutters on the window are partly open and something delicious-smelling is sitting on the sill. Some kind of baked thing, with meat in it—maybe a savory pie?

Anyway, it’s not guarded. Derek can hear sheep baaing over in the paddock as they come out of the barn, and in between, the shepherd shooing them away from him.

On the other hand, the barn’s big enough for more than one person. Derek stops where he is, trying to listen, but Peter doesn’t. Peter goes right up to the window, and while he does stop there, it’s barely long enough for him to peek around the building at whatever the shepherd’s doing. Then he pops up on his hind legs, shifting enough so that he can use his hands, and he grabs the pie-thing and hustles back to where Derek is waiting.

When Derek blows out his breath, Peter cocks his head curiously at him. Then puts the pie down between them, and starts digging in with his hand as Derek shifts human. “So nobody else?” Derek asks, diving in himself.

The pie’s got a filling of shredded meat—not chicken, some kind of gamebird—with chunks of potato in a gravy the color and consistency of caramel. Peter makes a couple little moaning noises before he answers. “No, I think it’s just him,” he says. He tilts his head again. “Not that I could look for long, but it didn’t smell like more than one person.”

“But scent’s weird around here,” Derek says. He scoops up another handful of pie filling and sucks off his fingers, hurrying to catch every drop before he loses them in the grass. “You noticed that, right?”

When Peter doesn’t answer, Derek looks over. Peter’s staring at his hand, for some reason. Then Peter shakes himself and ducks down, and reaches out for…right. Derek moves his ankle so they can both see.

“It _has_ faded,” Peter says, with a nod of satisfaction. “You smell better, too.”

“I think you’ve still got yours,” Derek says.

Peter stiffens. Then twists around to look so sharply that his knee rattles the pie and nearly makes the filling slop out. Derek’s a little ashamed about it, but the first thing he does is to steady the pie.

The second thing is he crawls around the pie to look at Peter’s side; Peter’s using his hands to stretch the skin over his ribs so Derek can’t see too much, but he does still see a slightly darker patch. It’s definitely lighter than before, but it’s still there. But Peter’s been moving fine, and despite the stink, he doesn’t smell _sick_.

“Well, for the smell, there’s a stream just over there,” Derek says, when Peter keeps poking at himself.

The other man ignores him. Derek sighs and starts eating again, but then almost flips it himself as the shepherd’s voice floats towards them, _much_ louder. It sounds like the shepherd’s walking along the building and…then a door swings and his voice gets softer. Derek relaxes, and then realizes that if the shepherd goes into the other half of the building, he’ll probably notice the missing pie.

“Peter,” Derek says sharply, grabbing up the pie.

“What?” Peter says, and then he stops, clearly hearing the shepherd, too.

“So, cookbook or fairytales today?” comes the shepherd’s voice. He’s not near the window but he’s still in the nearer half of the building. And he’s talking to someone.

Peter’s shoulders jerk and then he twists into a wolf. And smacks the pie from Derek’s hand, for some reason—when Derek hisses in dismay, Peter uses his muzzle to give Derek a thwap on the shoulder. And then again, so that Derek’s nose jams right into the spilled—oh.

Both shifted, they feverishly slurp up what’s left of the pie. Well, Derek does: Peter takes a few licks but mostly stands up and stares at the kitchen window.

“But they’re _dumb_ ,” the shepherd says in an exasperated tone. “They’re not even historical like that bookseller said! They’re just a bunch of swooning people—I mean, come on, would a king really send somebody who faints at the sight of _blood_ after a rampaging monster? At least with the cookbooks we’re figuring out how to not get sick of eating the same…it’s not even sheep meat! I’m respecting you, I am!”

Derek sucks up a last bit of filling, running his tongue over his muzzle to get at the gravy, and happens to catch Peter’s eye. Peter looks just as confused as he does, he’s glad to see.

“ _Fine_ , fairytales, but just because you guys have been pretty excellent about things lately,” the shepherd grumbles. “Also, no complaining if there just happen to be new editorial comments on these stories.”

A sheep bleats from inside the house. Then there’s the sound of the shepherd’s boots walking, followed closely by clopping hooves. The door creaks again and the shepherd heads back towards the paddock, still talking about how much he dislikes these fairytales. Occasionally the sheep baas at him.

Blinking slowly, Peter lowers his head to look at the pie tin. He twitches a little, seeing how scraped clean it is. Then he lifts his head and Derek winces, but…Peter doesn’t look over at him. Peter looks at the kitchen window. Then takes the tin in his mouth and carries it over and drops it just beneath the sill. He eyes it, then flips it upside-down with his paw. Then pushes it this way and that till it looks the way he wants it to, and then he comes back to Derek. He sniffs the stained grass, snorts, and scrabbles it up; Derek catches on and helps and in a couple seconds they’ve buried their traces.

* * *

“So we ate,” Derek says. “So we’re going back now?”

He and Peter have retreated to the stream. They’re still a little too close to the farm for comfort, but unless the shepherd actually crosses the paddock fence, he won’t be able to see them, and Peter doesn’t want to go too far from the salt line.

Peter hasn’t said but Derek guesses he thinks the shepherd has something to do with the thing that’d attacked them, or at least knows it exists and how to ward it off. Derek also guesses that Peter’s curious now and wants to know more about this shepherd, and the sinking feeling in Derek’s gut says Peter probably doesn’t care so much that the thing might come after them again while they’re doing that.

“It’d be easier if we had some provisions. Seeing as we lost ours, and this mountain doesn’t have any big game,” Peter says. He hunches over the edge of the rock he’s sitting on, cupping up water over his head. Then he grunts and just slips off the rock and into the water to get his whole head and shoulders under it.

Like most mountain streams, the water’s pure snow melt, and is _freezing_. And their clothes are still back by the rock outcrop. Derek wanted to clean himself up too, but he doesn’t want to come up an icicle.

Usually Peter’s even pickier about that sort of thing, but the fact that he’s just scrubbing away, and never mind that his teeth are chattering and his nipples look like little nuts, tells Derek how far along he is in planning…whatever he’s planning. “It’s not that far. We only were a day out to begin with,” Derek says, not that he thinks it’ll do any good.

“Well, we _were_. I don’t think we are now,” Peter says, dropping his hands and looking over. “And if we have another run-in, who knows how long it’ll take? For all we know, that might be the thing’s strategy. Just wear us out till we die of hunger and exhaustion.”

Derek sighs. “So we’re just going to wait for him to put out more food?”

“ _No_. We’re not stray dogs, Derek, we’re _werewolves_ ,” Peter snaps. He finally seems to notice how cold the water is, and shivers violently before hauling himself back up onto the rock. Then he starts scraping the dampness off of himself, roughly enough that he’s leaving red marks that don’t immediately fade. “We have brains as well as superior strength, and we’re going to use _both_ , and—”

“You want to shift?” Derek says. When Peter glares at him, he fights the urge to drop his head and waves at the water puddling under Peter. “Look, you’ll dry faster. You know that.”

Peter glares at him a little longer. Then, put-upon from head to toe, the other man drops forward and turns into a wolf. A sodden, grumpy wolf who doesn’t wait for Derek to get out of range before he shakes himself into a _damp_ grumpy wolf.

And people say Derek has a bad temper. Derek shifts himself and stifles a sneeze in the grass, and then quickly licks off his wet patches. Then he sits back and waits for Peter to finish grooming himself.

It’s taking a while. Well, Peter had to go and dunk his whole body, and…Peter’s just getting more and more cranky, with his ears nearly disappearing into his head, they’re flattened so far back. Derek sighs again and gets up.

Peter jerks his head up and stares at him and Derek bobs his head, trying to look inoffensive. He probably should drop to his belly too, but before he can get over his irritation enough for that, Peter huffs and settles back. So Derek scoots the rest of the way over and then starts helping, licking at Peter’s ruff and the back of his head, where it’s hard for the other man to reach.

Then Peter whuffs out a breath and presses into him. Derek lets out an annoyed whine before he can help himself, but Peter is _wet_ and _cold_.

But Peter would just tell him that Peter put up with plenty when Derek was a kid, and he and his sisters would curl up with Peter whenever their mother had to go out, including and up to that time with the skunk. So Derek grits his teeth and just wills Peter to warm up faster.

It takes a second for him to realize that Peter’s stopped grooming himself. Instead Peter’s staring at him, with an odd tinge to his scent, surprise but in a non-annoyed way. Then Peter’s eyes narrow at something on Derek’s muzzle, and Peter suddenly leans over and laps at Derek’s chin.

Derek jerks back and Peter makes an amused noise, then shifts human. “You’re still covered in that gravy,” he says. “Really, Derek, sometimes having you around is like having an eternal toddler.”

“I am not,” Derek mutters, shifting himself. The moment the words are out of his mouth, he wishes he’d just shut up. He just makes things worse when he tries to talk, and especially when Peter’s around. Shaking his head, he gets over to the stream and dips up water to rub off his face. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to try and sneak into his house when you think he knows magic? What if—what if he’s controlling that thing from the other night?”

“If he was, I don’t think he’d need to put up defenses,” Peter says.

“But what if the salt’s not for _that_?” Derek says. “What if it’s for something else?”

Peter sucks his breath a little. He’s not amused now, and for a moment Derek even thinks that he’s going to tell Derek off. But then he just twists around and looks up the slope towards the farm.

“I’m not just being obsessed,” he says, under his breath but sharp. His shoulders are stiff and hunched. “Yes, he’s interesting, but _also_ , nephew, I told your mother I’d make sure you didn’t die and this is the only certain food source on this mountain. And I never said we were going into the _house_.”

“Fine,” Derek says. He watches Peter watch the mountainside. Then he swallows hard and makes himself sound less resentful. “Okay. So we’re going after the sheep again? But don’t they seem strange to you?”

“They seem unnaturally curious, is what they seem,” Peter says, looking back at Derek. His brows rise and he starts smelling amused again. “Which is not a bad thing, you know. At least where we’re concerned.”

* * *

Even if Derek wishes they’d just try and backtrack to actual villages, he has to admit Peter’s taking the sheep idea seriously. They spend the whole day hidden downwind of the paddock and watching the sheep and the shepherd, trying to learn the farm routines.

It’s boring. The sheep graze and then lie down and chomp their cud. Occasionally one gets up and wanders over to the half-barrel manger the shepherd filled up with water first thing in the morning, or to a small pile of manure at one corner of the paddock. Mostly they stay in a loose huddle around the shepherd, who alternates between perching on the fence and flopping in the grass while reading aloud to the sheep.

When noon hits, the shepherd goes out of the paddock and two sheep go with him. Turns out he’s got a tiny garden right up against the side of the house, and he spends some time weeding it; the sheep get the weeds. Then he leaves them and goes into the house, and from what Derek can tell, the sheep keep eating the weeds. _Just_ the weeds.

“Can you train sheep?” Derek mutters.

“If you can, it certainly doesn’t include training them to have better attention spans,” Peter says, pointing at where a sheep appears to be chasing a flying insect.

It must be a biting one, because the sheep keeps snapping its teeth in the air as if trying to crush it. Which doesn’t seem like sheep-like behavior, although Derek usually doesn’t spend a lot of time with ones who aren’t skinned and hanging up in a butcher’s. At any rate, the sheep ends up coming across the paddock and almost to where he and Peter are hidden. Derek starts to tense up and Peter puts his hand on Derek’s back.

“No, he’s coming back,” Peter says.

The shepherd reappears with a cloth bundle swinging from his hand, a different book—Derek thinks; the cover’s the same color but it looks a little smaller—and a big metal disc. At first Derek thinks it’s a plate, but then he notices that one side is covered in little parts that move when the shepherd fiddles with it.

“Astrolabe,” Peter supplies, shifting besides Derek. “Astronomy—astrology?”

“Is he checking whether he can do a spell?” Derek hisses.

Peter sucks his breath a little, staring at the shepherd. Then he shakes his head, as the shepherd puts the book and astrolabe aside and plops down and unties the bundle to reveal lunch. “Not now. It’s day anyway, it’s not that useful now…”

“Hey, get your own food,” the shepherd says, batting off a too-inquisitive sheep. “Come on. I need this, I have to stay up late tonight.”

“Hmm,” Peter says. “I didn’t think today was anything special…he’s young to be that advanced, too.”

Derek watches the two sheep come back from the garden. One of them’s the lone ram, and it walks up to bump its head against the shepherd’s back in what seems to be a friendly way, from how the shepherd reaches over and tousles its wool. “He’s around your age, isn’t he? Just looks younger, but he doesn’t smell like he’s still in puberty.”

“That’s a good point,” Peter says, his brows up in surprise. But he doesn’t follow up with any sarcasm, just rubs his nose. “Though the druids always complain to your mother about how I’m getting ahead of myself…”

“Do you think he’s a druid?” Derek asks, only just thinking of it.

Peter obviously considered that already, because he doesn’t even shake his head. He just snorts a negative. “Up here with just sheep to talk to? Without any way to get the gossip? Giving away things for free?”

Derek makes a face into the ground. “Well, it’s not like anybody ever talks to me about them. Even Laura tells me to just go watch Cora.”

When Peter rubs the back of his neck, he stiffens in surprise. Then looks over, and finds Peter watching him with a strangely blank face. Peter’s fingers slow, and then Peter gives Derek a little pat and withdraws his hand. “That’s why you leave the pack, Derek,” Peter says in an absent tone. “To learn what they don’t or won’t tell you.”

The shepherd eats his lunch and then picks up the book and starts reading aloud again. This time it’s…the style is like the fairytales from the morning, but it’s talking about events that actually sound like they could’ve happened. Not lone knights against monsters, but battles and rival kings and disasters like famines and plagues. There’s one section that makes Peter sit up so Derek has to nudge him to keep them from being spotted, about a thoughtless king who sold off royal heirlooms to a witch so she’d hex his enemies, only to end up plunging the whole land into danger when she used the heirlooms to remove the land’s protections against ancient monsters.

“We know that one,” Peter tells Derek. “Some of it, anyway.”

“Part of it sounds like the darach legends,” Derek says. “And then that one part that sounds like the Wild Hunt.”

Peter narrows his eyes at him, then snorts and nudges into Derek with his shoulder. “You would remember the bits that people don’t think are actual history.”

“They’re the ones with fights that aren’t just, and then the alpha killed them,” Derek mutters. “So there’s actually something to remember.”

He can feel Peter looking at him again and he shifts uncomfortably. It’s nice to not have his uncle looking like he’s a disappointment, but on the other hand, when Peter gets interested in something…Peter snorts again and looks back at the flock. “I never knew some people blamed the king for bringing up all of that, or that it wasn’t just the witch and she had to have relics,” Peter says thoughtfully. “I suppose the parts circulating where we live, they’re the ones we actually had to deal with. Whoever killed the king and the witch must have done it in the capital.”

“But that all happened a while ago, right?” Derek says. “If people aren’t even sure it happened.”

Peter hisses his breath in and out of his teeth, but when Derek looks, it’s the shepherd that’s got Peter tensing up. The man’s stopped reading and gotten to his feet, and is waving his crook towards the barn.

“All right, I know, I know, it’s early, but it’s going to be bad enough tonight,” the shepherd is saying to the sheep. They drag their feet, but they file towards the barn. “Come on, you ate plenty. Now get inside so I don’t have to worry where you are later.”

“Later?” Derek says.

“Hmmm,” Peter says.

* * *

Once the sheep are indoors—and all of them are, no left-behind ones this time—the shepherd goes into the other half. But he’s back out relatively quickly, and when he comes out, he’s got another bundle of food, a pack that has that astrolabe sticking out of it, and a thicker cloak on. He’s obviously going somewhere, even though it’s only an hour or so from sundown.

He seems less lighthearted, too. After tying the bundle and pack to the end of his crook, he shoulders that and then pauses to look out over the mountainside. He’s not exactly looking in Derek and Peter’s direction, but something about the way he’s fidgeting makes Derek think he’s talking to them, like _he’s_ taking comfort from the idea that somebody’s listening.

“I hate new moons,” he says. “Six of ‘em down and they still…what? Oh, _stop_ it, okay? Like I need to have to fix the door when I drag my sore carcass home in the morning…”

That’s to whatever sheep is bleating pitifully and knocking against the barn door. The knocking stops, but as the shepherd sighs and turns away, one last, mournful ‘baa’ comes floating after him. He winces and shakes his head, and just tugs his cloak’s hood over his head.

“Just do me a favor, try not to make a mess,” the shepherd says, stalking off towards the treeline. “I could use those sacks, and you try and patch up burlap with bark strips and yarn…”

They wait till he’s disappeared into the trees, and then longer. And then they jump the fence and slip across the paddocks and come up to the barn.

As promised, they don’t go inside. What they do is Derek goes to one side of the barn and starts growling and snarling and stomping back and forth so that his smell wafts inside, where the sheep quickly grow alarmed and start scurrying back and forth, making panicked noises. Peter goes to the other side and works at a shutter till he figures out how to get it open, and when Derek hears the whine of its hinges, he presses up against the barn, hooks his forelegs over a windowsill, puts his muzzle right to another window and howls as loudly as he can.

Well, that’s the idea. Scare a sheep into jumping out, since the windows are big enough. Except Derek’s barely started howling when suddenly the earth gives way under his feet, and his howl ends up a frantic cry instead.

He scrabbles at the sill, even trying to shift so he can wrap his fingers around it, but it’s too slippery— _slicked_ up with fat rendered till it’s nearly scentless, he realizes too late. His hindlegs are already dangling into empty space, and when he tries to swing them up, hoping to hook his claws into the side of the building, he finds that’s been greased too.

So Derek lands in the bottom of a hole.

It’s deep enough that the breath is driven out of him, even if he somehow managed to not snap a bone, and for a second he just lies there. The smell of torn turf is all around him, and when he finally pushes out a paw, he turns up a fragment of sod and strips of cloth, which he guesses was what was covering up the hole. And there are—he scrambles up and immediately loses his balance again and sits hard on the—the bags. They’re burlap.

They’re filled with something, and are very springy when he pokes them. He thinks the filling might be hay.

A frantic bark makes Derek look up. He barks back, and a second later, Peter’s peering over the edge of the hole. Peter sniffs loudly, dips his muzzle a little, and then backs up. Then he reappears, shifted to human. The relief is fading rapidly to exasperation, but it’s still there on his face.

“What—” he starts.

“I _know_ ,” Derek snaps. “I know, all right? Don’t tell—I know, just—back up so I can get out.”

Peter frowns but he edges away from the hole. Which isn’t that deep, Derek should be able to jump out and if he can’t get all of his body clear, Peter’s there to pull him out, so…Derek hunches down as far as he can, eyeing the rim of the hole.

Then Peter makes a noise.

It’s low and strangled and it’s the most fearful noise Derek’s ever heard from the man. It makes him go from crouching to curling up at the bottom of the hole, pressed as far from the rim as he can get.

Then he forces himself to uncurl. Rakes his claws across one thigh so the pain will clear up his head, get over that chill in his veins, get him to _move_. He lunges to the other side of the hole and stabs his claws into the earth, ready to dig himself out if he has to—only for Peter to suddenly come tumbling down onto the spot Derek just left.

Peter hisses a little, when he lands, and again when he sees Derek, but other than that, he doesn’t make another sound. Just reaches over and grabs Derek’s arm, and drags him down so that they’re huddling together. Like rabbits, freezing in hopes that the predator will just overlook them.

Overhead and somewhere near the far end of the paddock, there’s a thump. The sheep have shut up too, Derek realizes. Then there’s another thump, and then…it’s a bizarre, prolonged, kind of tearing noise, but it’s all dull and muffled. It’s like he’s listening to something being ripped apart, but it’s happening in the next room over.

“It’s standing right on the other side of the salt,” Peter suddenly whispers. “It’s looking this way, and I think—I think it knows it can _throw_ over the line.”

Just as he says that, something lands on the ground just a few yards from the hole. It’s big and heavy enough that the whole area shakes and the metal shutters above them rattle. Then, as things start to smooth out, little bits of dirt with grass still rooted in them begin to patter over the rim of the hole, and Derek understands that whatever it was, it just yanked up a piece of the _ground_ and threw it towards the farmhouse.

“The sal—” Derek hisses back at Peter, only to have Peter slap a hand over his mouth.

There are more tearing noises. And thuds, but farther off, near the other end of the house, and no more dirt comes into the hole. And then it’s quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inland salt deposits do occur, and making salt doesn't require that you live by the seaside (sea salt's just been marketed super-well over the years). But you do need lots and lots of water.
> 
> The whole salt protects against evil thing, that's real folklore, so no, I am not just ripping off _Supernatural_.


	4. Chapter 4

Hours crawl by. The sheep suddenly start moving around again, making soft nervous noises and stamping their feet, but Derek and Peter stay put in the hole. It’s not till the sky starts to lighten that they even uncurl, and even then, neither of them want to be the first to put their head up over the edge of the hole. Even if Peter doesn’t really want to admit it.

“I don’t think it’s a yeti, or anything like that,” Peter says. He’s standing near the side of the hole with his head up, sniffing occasionally. Sometimes he’ll put his hand against the earth like he’ll sink in his claws, but then he jerks it back and paces around the tiny space. “Anything in that line, the scent would be unmistakable.”

“It also doesn’t have a heartbeat,” Derek points out. He almost also says that if they’re talking, then they’re not really worried it’ll hear them—but then Peter’s going to make him climb out first. “It’s like it’s dead. Is that what it is? Some—what do you call it, some necro-thing?”

“Well, for a ghost it’s terribly physical, isn’t it?” Peter says, a little snappishly. Then he reaches up towards the hole’s rim again. “Besides, for ghosts you need something to die. Which means that thing used to be alive, and when it was…what was it _then_?”

And he looks at Derek as if Derek is supposed to have an answer for that. He’s always looking like that, Derek thinks, biting back a sudden jolt of anger. Like that, and then ignoring Derek’s questions, and acting like anybody else is ever going to answer them when he knows Derek’s mother is too busy and Laura is always running off doing ‘alpha’ things, and Cora doesn’t know any more than Derek does.

“A yeti,” Derek finally grunts.

“It’s _not_ a yeti!” Peter spits at him. “There aren’t any yetis within a hundred miles of here! Honestly, nephew, I know your geography’s less than—”

“Well, at least I’m trying to guess!” Derek snarls back. “I’m not like you, pretending like I know everything when coming out here was your stupid idea in the first place, and now we don’t know how to get back and you just don’t want to say we’re _lost_!”

Peter’s eyes suddenly flare bright blue. “Oh, of course, says the little idiot who nearly got us all killed because a pretty woman asked him nicely. You’re lucky anybody from our family even wanted to _get lost_ with you.”

Derek sucks in his breath. It’s like Peter socked him in the gut, and when the first shock passes, like what comes flooding in isn’t air, but pure cold.

And truth. He knew that, knew his mother must’ve just begged Peter into doing this. It’s just Peter’s always wanted to go off on his own and for some reason his mother wouldn’t allow it before. Not till she had a son who she couldn’t do anything with, and who the rest of the pack doesn’t want around anymore.

He drops back against the side of the hole, down into a squat. His knees feel rubbery and he kneads them with his hands, but he doesn’t really think that that’ll do much. 

“Derek,” Peter mutters, but when Derek looks up, Peter’s not looking at him. Peter’s gone back to staring at the top of the hole. 

He does stiffen a little bit, like he feels Derek looking. But then he jerks his shoulders back and forth and rocks on his feet, and puts his arms up so his hands are flat against the dirt. He breathes in and out sharply; his scent’s mostly exhaustion and irritation, but there’s a tinge of what Derek would call embarrassment, if he didn’t know Peter too well to believe it’s that.

“Not doing this in a damn _hole_ , get out first,” Peter finally says under his breath. His head ticks over, but not quite far enough for him to see Derek. Then he inhales deeply, and Derek can see his thighs tense up for a leap.

“…oh, come _on_ ,” suddenly comes drifting to them. The shepherd’s coming back.

Peter’s eyes widen and he snaps back from the side of the hole, then falls into a defensive crouch. His elbow jostles into Derek and Derek flinches away, tightening all his limbs into as small of a knot as he can manage. The other man looks over and the way Peter’s mouth twists up is disapproving, but oddly, it’s not directed at Derek—there’s no one but them to be mad at, so why he’d look like that…the shepherd’s tramp comes across the ground towards them and Peter’s head goes up. His hand goes back, blindly striking Derek’s arm, then grabbing it and sliding down to Derek’s elbow to squeeze hard.

“Seriously? Seriously? Okay, you’re undead and you’re angry, but you really, literally have to tear up the countryside? What happens when you’ve got nobody to scare, huh? Are you really undead if you’ve got nothing to undead at? Ugh.” The closer the shepherd comes, the more he sounds like he’s struggling, grunting and panting and even falling a couple times. “And how am I supposed to clean this up? They’re _sheep_ , not cows, and let me tell you, people-powered plows went out of fashion a while ago…”

The sheep are baaing loudly but not urgently, Derek thinks. They recognize the shepherd, and…Derek’s probably just making it up at this point, but it’s almost like they’re curious. They’re welcoming him back and also nagging him to let them out.

“Hold your horses, I can’t even—keep my shoes on—” the shepherd grunts unhappily. For a couple steps he sounds like he’s hopping, and then he goes back to normal walking with a sigh. “And…oh. Okay. Well, I guess if you were going to come visiting, at least you guys had the sense to do that _before_ it showed up. Sorry about the mess, things usually look—you know, less razed than this.”

The shepherd’s head pops over the rim of the hole as he says that last part. He’s squatting and the end of his crook is just sticking past his knees: he’s got it over his lap and it doesn’t have the bags tied to it anymore, but it does have a dark, tarry-looking substance smeared over it, which smells a little like rot and a little like ashes, and mostly of dried-up flesh.

He stares for a moment, then sighs. “Okay. Guys. You’re obviously not wolves. Last I checked, wolves don’t dig pastry, even if I do make an awesome hot-water crust.”

Derek and Peter, both shifted to wolf form, keep their mouths shut and just stare back. Peter doesn’t have to point out to Derek that they can’t see the shepherd’s other hand, and that cloak is plenty baggy enough to hide all sorts of dangerous things.

“Right, then.” The shepherd rolls his eyes a little and then rubs at the side of his face. He looks tired too, with great dark circles under his eyes, and his scent has that sickly, sweet-sour trace of somebody who’s been putting in hours and hours of sweaty effort. “Okay…um, hi? I’m Stiles. I’ve fed you twice, so I’m not hostile? Well, okay, except maybe I’m fattening you up…but look, I might be sick of chicken but I’m not _that_ sick.”

Wanting to eat them actually hadn’t occurred to Derek until just then. He _is_ listening and doesn’t take it seriously, but he can’t help the images that pop into his head and make the bile rise up in the back of his throat. He does his best, but still ends up coughing.

Peter rumbles in his throat, too low for Stiles to hear, but loud enough for Derek to wince. Stiles does seem to pick up on something, because he frowns and then his eyes and mouth go round and he jerks the staff off his lap. “Oh, yeah, sorry, I know this stuff reeks. Actually, hang on, I’ll go put this inside…”

Stiles gets up and they hear his footsteps go up to the barn. Creaking hinges, a sudden rush of hooves and Stiles yelping and telling the sheep not to cuddle him to death, and as soon as that happens, Derek and Peter shift human. Peter grabs Derek again, this time by the waist, and heaves him nearly all the way up to the top of the hole.

Derek stabs his claws into the turf and scrabbles till he’s got one arm over. Then Peter seizes his knees and shoves them up, and he gets the other arm over the top. He yanks himself out, twists around, and throws out his arm just as Peter’s running leap gets the other man halfway up the hole to grab it.

He hauls Peter the rest of the way up. By the time Peter hits the ground, he’s gone to wolf again, and it’s a matter of seconds before Derek joins him in the same form. Then they run towards the outcrop, as fast as they can.

Which isn’t as fast as Derek would like because the ground is all covered with—with these giant strips of turf, like it was nothing but a flimsy rug somebody shredded. Parts of the fences have been knocked down or twisted over, and some of the ground is mounded up so high that Derek has to climb it instead of jump it. And then, when they’re past the edge of the farm, huge swaths of the mountainside have been scraped down to a gravelly mix of pebbles and clay, showing where the pieces of turf had come from.

“Hey! Hey, no, wait, it’s the new moon!” Stiles yells after them.

They’re far enough that Derek risks a look back. Stiles is standing at the doorway of the barn, with a blanket over one arm and the other waving frantically at them. He yells something else about the moon, but Peter barks at the same time and Derek can’t make it out but he _can_ make out Peter wanting to hurry away. 

Derek swerves towards Peter. Maybe Peter doesn’t want him around, but family who doesn’t want him is still better than nobody.

* * *

The two of them make a quick stop to retrieve the bags, and then they head down the mountainside till, judging that they’ve gone too far for Stiles to catch up, Peter stops. “Besides, I need to figure out which way to go,” Peter mutters, squinting up at the sky. “I think I remember the sun’s angle on the way up and which way the streams were flowing, so if I work backwards…”

“Yeah,” Derek says, looking away.

Peter inhales like he wants to say something, but when Derek looks over, Peter’s making scratches in the dirt with one claw, obviously working on directions. So Derek moves off to the side, so he won’t irritate the man.

He doesn’t think Peter will actually leave him on his own. Peter talks a lot about how annoying Derek and his sisters are, but for as long as Derek can remember, his uncle’s always been around to haul them back home. They wouldn’t annoy Peter so much if Peter _didn’t_ feel like he had to do that. Having to be a big brother without the benefits of getting their admiration, as Peter likes to put it.

But Derek really hit a sore spot back in the hole, and when Peter’s truly angry, even Derek’s mother gets wary of him. So he figures he should just try and make the other man forget he’s there, at least till he can figure out what to say to calm Peter down.

“Are you wandering off when this place has some undead terror walking around?” Peter suddenly says, still reading.

Derek stops where he is, then stifles a sigh and drops down beside a tree stump. “No.”

“Good,” Peter says. He chews at his lip, then jerks his head up and starts trying to peer through the treetops again. “How long till sunset?”

The leaves are really thick and it’s getting cloudy, too, so it’s hard for Derek to get much of an idea about where the sun is. He doesn’t think they ran for that long, and it was still barely day when they got out of the hole, but…he looks around and spies a lighter patch where maybe there’s a break in the coverage, and starts to head over, only to have Peter snarl at him.

“What did I just say?” Peter snaps. “Do you want to get eaten?”

“No, I just—” Derek bites back the rest.

Peter presses his lips together, obviously swallowing down his own comments. Then he just gives Derek a tight little wave, motioning for Derek to come back and sit with him. Derek hesitates and Peter slams his hand down on the ground. “Oh, would you just—do you have to be so—”

“I’m trying to let you work,” Derek says. Nerves, not so much anger, make him sound grumpy. “You’re the one who knows—”

“What, I thought you thought I don’t know where we are?” Peter says.

Derek opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again. He shouldn’t. He knows he’s not going to win. “Well, can’t you figure it out, even if you don’t? You just said you could.”

“That’s right, complain and complain and when it comes down to it, still leave it to me to fix it,” Peter snorts. “You can’t trust me enough to tell me what you’re doing but you can trust me to get you out of something.”

“What are you talking about?” Derek says, blinking. “I tell you plenty. I told you—”

“You didn’t tell me about a certain woman, did you?” Peter says.

Derek sucks in his breath. That cold, gutted feeling comes back into him, and then he huffs out all the air in his lungs, trying to push it away. He’s so forceful about it that he accidentally kicks the stump; it’s rotted enough that it comes partway out of the ground before cracking across. “Because I didn’t even believe it myself! I’m just—I know I was stupid, I know I screwed up! I didn’t ever want—I just didn’t want anybody to laugh at me!”

Peter lets out a humorless laugh. “Why would we laugh at a hunter trying to burn us all alive?”

“I didn’t know she was doing that, I _told_ you. I told you _that_ ,” Derek hisses. He gets up and then sits down again, and this time, he kicks the stump on purpose. “I meant…I meant that she liked me. That I thought she liked me. I didn’t believe it either, I just…I didn’t want to make it stop. Which was stupid, I know, and I wish I hadn’t—”

“Why wouldn’t you think she liked you?” Peter says. He’s frowning. He looks and smells genuinely confused.

“Because she ended up trying to kill everybody including me?” Derek says.

“Oh, for…I know you had no idea about that. Everybody knew that, the moment we found out,” Peter says. He absently prods at his dirt scratches, then pulls in his claws and turns towards Derek. “You’ve never been any good at that kind of plotting, that’s why we all called you a moron instead of treating you like a traitor, Derek. Now, if it’d been me…”

Derek can’t help rolling his eyes. “If it’d been you, you would’ve figured it out right away and laughed in her face. Probably brought Mom her head or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peter scoffs. “That would be a terrible trophy, she wasn’t _that_ good-looking. And that blonde was all chamomile wash, I’m sure.”

Derek looks up in disbelief and his and Peter’s eyes accidentally lock. The amusement quickly fades out of Peter’s eyes and then he’s the one who breaks away, ducking his head to rub at the side of his face.

“Speaking of, your mother would have a field day with this,” he mutters. “‘Don’t make it so complicated, Peter, you’re going to lose track yourself, if you _really_ want to be an alpha someday…’”

“You do?” Derek says, blinking. Then he looks away when Peter turns back towards him. “I just—yeah, that sounds like you. But you’d have to leave then, and you…you’ve never left.”

“Well, till now, and look how that’s gone,” Peter sighs. He pokes at the ground, then makes a face. “I just can’t see…is that really your type? Blonde and big-breasted and unpleasant? She wasn’t even that nice to you, from what I could tell.”

“I _know_.” Derek’s about to launch into how he knows all the little signs he should’ve picked up, everybody’s pointed them out to him so many times, and then he notices how Peter’s not really smelling irritated. The man’s just puzzled. “But she…she just would talk to _me_. Even if she was making fun, she’d come find me first, and wouldn’t look at anybody else. That’s why I said I couldn’t believe it either, all right? Nobody talks to _me_ first.”

Peter raises his brows. “Because you’re the son of _Talia Hale_ , Derek. If you had any idea the number of fights we’ve had to keep people away from you children—”

“Well, if you’d said, instead of just acting like that’s just another one of those things I’m supposed to sneak around and figure out myself,” Derek snaps.

“If you’d come and asked instead of acting like you’ve gotten allergic to talking to me since you put on those extra inches,” Peter snaps back. “ _Child_ is right.”

“That’s why I don’t talk to you anymore. Because you always just think I’m a kid, and I’m not now, and you’re—you just—you don’t even like me anyway,” Derek says. He thinks he should stop himself. This whole conversation is falling away from him like he’s jumped off a cliff, but the more he reaches out for something to grab for a brake, the farther away he gets from the rocks. “You’re just doing this because it’s the only way Mom was going to let you go. I know that, all right? I know I’m just an excuse for you to do what you want.”

“Oh, for…” Then Peter presses both hands over his face. He makes aggravated noises into them and Derek shifts uneasily on his feet, thinking about using the chance to move away—but then Peter looks up. He stares at Derek, then suddenly hops over and grabs Derek’s shoulder before Derek can. “And I didn’t just let you wander off the moment we got out of pack territory because—”

Derek shrugs. “I don’t know, because you’re afraid of Mom?”

Peter stares at him. Then laughs, high, disbelieving, and—and hurt. “You—you all really think I hate our family that much. You think I’d just—just get you killed, and I didn’t even—you weren’t even with _me_ when you ran into that woman, you were off with Laura.”

“I don’t think you hate us,” Derek says, blinking. “I just…I wasn’t saying—it’s just Mom’s the only one who even wanted me around afterwards, and I’m not—she’s my mother, she _has_ to think like that, and the rest of you are right, it’s not like I deserve…”

“You’re such an _idiot_ ,” Peter suddenly says. He whips his hand up by Derek’s head and Derek flinches, but for some reason Peter deliberately misses. All the blow does is ruffle Derek’s hair a little, and then Peter drops back and starts rubbing his hand over his face again. “And your _mother_ , if you want to talk about that. I told Talia it was stupid. Don’t make them think being a Hale is a big deal, don’t put any pressure on them, right, and then when they find out that’s all just a lie they’re going to just immediately know how to cope with being who we are. Of course. And what does that make _me_ , the one she raised wrong? I’m her brother when she needs help and her fourth kid when she just wants to lecture, and nothing but a prop to you three when you want something, who am _I_ supposed to talk to…”

Peter goes on muttering to himself for a few minutes in that line. Derek knew Peter and his mother disagree about how to run the pack, but Peter doesn’t usually say it right to anyone’s face—and when he does, everybody goes and hides till he and Derek’s mother are done—so this is probably the most detailed explanation of _why_ Derek’s ever heard.

“Well, never mind,” Peter finally says, looking up again. He glances around them, then sighs and turns to reach for the bag. “Look, fine, you’re right, it’s just a waste of time hanging around that farm. So we’ll go back down and find that last inn, and at least have a bath and an actual bed, and—”

“We’re not going back to the pack, are we?” Derek says.

Peter looks at him, lips pressed together. Then sighs again. “Derek, would you just make up your mind? I’m—I’m _trying_ to do this properly, but if you keep—”

“I’m not saying we should stay _here_ ,” Derek snaps, and then he makes himself take a deep breath. “I’m just saying. If you’re tired of having me around, I could probably just stay at an inn while you go travel.”

“Sometimes I just…” Peter’s hand edges up like he’s going to cover his face again, and then he drops it and looks up at the treetops. “Derek. There’s a _reason_ , and it’s not that I want to get you killed, that I decided I’d take you out and stick your mother with Laura. Who should’ve been keeping an eye on you in the _first_ place, what with being the actual born _alpha_. It’s not like you’re the only one in the family who needs to learn a few things.”

“Yeah, well, what?” Derek says. “Why else would you want me around?”

Peter’s head comes down and he stares at Derek again. He’s angry, he smells like that, but he also—Derek sniffs sharply, not quite believing it. The corners of Peter’s mouth tighten but he keeps looking at Derek.

“She smelled like that too,” Derek blurts out, not thinking. “That’s why I thought maybe she really was—but I was wrong with her—”

“You are such an _idiot_ ,” Peter snarls. His eyes flare blue, and then the glow dims and he suddenly twists around.

He grabs at the sack and Derek grabs at him. Still snarling, Peter swings his arm back, hitting Derek’s thigh with his hand and trying to shake Derek off. Derek pushes over onto his knee, ducking the arm, and then grabs Peter’s hip and then Peter slips, or something like that. Anyway, when he goes down, Derek gets yanked up, and for a second Derek’s sprawled over him.

Of course Peter pushes Derek off, and then pulls his arm free. “Oh, now what?” Peter snaps.

“I—” Derek starts, and then he levers himself up on his elbow and kisses the other man.

Peter makes a startled noise, but when Derek moves back, Peter’s hand curls around his nape and holds him in place. Then Peter crawls over him, kissing back, and Peter’s—better than Kate, Derek can’t help thinking. She was always in a hurry, and telling him to just stop messing around and get to it. Peter’s tongue flicks against Derek’s teeth and Derek twitches in surprise, then wraps his hands around Peter’s arms as they squirm across the bag.

The leather ends up making them slip apart, when Derek rides abruptly over the edge of a book and thumps down a couple inches. He hiccups, embarrassingly enough, then sucks in his breath.

Peter’s breathing hard. He doesn’t even make fun of the hiccup. His hair’s in his face and behind that he’s staring at Derek like Derek looks more delicious than any stolen pie. “Don’t tell me,” he says, surprisingly harsh. “You weren’t thinking just now. Because you never _think_.”

“You—couldn’t you have done that before?” Derek says. “How was I supposed to _know_? Sure, I could smell it sometimes but I thought—making fun of me again—”

“What, you mean kiss you?” Peter blinks twice. He’d tensed up but now confusion’s making him relax. His fingers slip against Derek’s throat and tickle a little, and Derek looks up at his throat and there’s a smear of dirt across one side, like a gash. “In front of your mother and sisters? And you weren’t just going to scream about your weird uncle and run off?”

Derek makes a face, but he’s looking at that smear. He sits up and wipes at it, but stops when he feels Peter swallowing under his fingers. “Well, I don’t think I would’ve _screamed_ ,” he mutters. “I don’t scream at things. And—and you never were much of an uncle anyway. You’re not even that much older.”

That comes out wrong, but even as Derek’s grimacing, Peter’s laughing. Laughing, and then he noses in, presses their cheeks together. It’s like normal scenting but then he rubs his face over so that his breath’s tickling at Derek’s ear, and Derek finds himself closing his eyes and smelling the other man.

“You’re such a little shit,” Peter says affectionately. “Never mind that you’re going to be built like a damn bull when all’s said and done, you’re—”

Derek sees the shadow cross Peter’s bare back. Peter’s hands suddenly tighten on him, and then the thing’s smashing through the trees towards them.

The falling branch—that’s what’s throwing the shadow, because the thing doesn’t have one—it gets caught in the interlaced treetops and that slows it just enough for Derek and Peter to roll apart. Its crash still catches Derek’s hand mid-shift, and as he comes up a wolf, he’s hopping on three legs and shaking his smashed paw, futilely trying to make it heal faster. He scrambles back towards the bags, but then Peter bashes his head against Derek’s flank, snarling and snapping. So Derek abandons the bags and just runs.

Peter’s right on his heels, and then suddenly isn’t. Derek whirls around, only to find himself face-to-face with the thing—and a few yards away, Peter’s gnashing his teeth at _another_ one. The one facing Derek tries to grab him by the ruff and he runs himself into a tree avoiding it. Staggers back up, dazed, and then sobers up in a hurry as the thing lumbers after him.

He ducks under its…forelimb…and comes skidding up behind the one that’s cornered Peter. When it starts to turn, Peter immediately darts past it, growling at Derek to follow. 

They flee deeper into the woods. Derek has no idea where, but as his breath comes shorter and shorter, and his muscles start to burn, he realizes they’re going uphill. That’s not towards the last village and he’s—not got the time to think about it, because the trees thin out so they’re losing cover and when he turns around, those things are throwing _boulders_ at them.

It’s easy to dodge the big rocks, but less so to avoid what the rocks knock down: trees, bushes, even a whole swath of soft earth. The sliding mud sucks at Derek’s back paws and he loses his balance, then heaves and claws his way up as Peter barks urgently at him, as if he doesn’t feel the wind of the things’ blows over his back.

Derek’s just gotten free and back up onto four legs when Peter suddenly gets dragged backwards, eyes widening in panic as his back legs are jerked straight out from under him. He immediately tries to get up, but whatever has him keeps him down on his belly and half-into a bush—the bush isn’t big enough to hide one of those things, unless they can go invisible and Derek remembers they _can_ and he just.

It’s stupid and he’s not thinking but he just jumps right over Peter, trying to plow into the invisible monster. Except there’s _no_ monster, and the ground comes up much too fast and then Derek’s sprawled breathless on it, a burning pain in his ribs and one knee, right next to a piece of rope.

The rope goes back into the bush, and as Derek grunts and hisses his way up onto his forelegs, he can see the rope comes out the other side and is all twisted around Peter’s legs. Peter’s alternating between bending around to gnaw at it and facing forward to roar at the oncoming things, but neither are working well, as far as Derek can tell.

Derek drags himself around the bush and adds his roar, but the things don’t even seem to hear him. It’s not night either, he thinks. Cloudy sky, but it’s afternoon, and they’re still up, and they’re huge manlike things with shaggy grey hair, and they don’t have _faces_. Just great bone-cracking hands with ragged, awful-looking yellow nails.

Peter snarls a last time, then wrenches himself around and chews at the ropes so viciously that Derek hears a tooth snap. Derek hauls himself in front of Peter and keeps roaring, but his leg hurts—he doesn’t think he can jump yet. When one of the things comes near enough, he swerves himself to the side, hoping it’ll at least follow him—and it does, but quicker than he expected. It grabs his hurt leg.

He whips around and sinks his teeth into its arm, but just the taste makes him gag. Try to gag, anyway—the thing’s flesh is soft as carrion and sticky like honey, so that Derek struggles to pull away even as the thick, sour, rotted taste of it has his throat convulsing.

The thing drops him, at least, but even before he lands, that icy numbness is shooting up his thigh, rendering that leg useless even if it has healed. The cold is in his mouth too, paralyzing it so he can’t even cry out as the thing lifts its arm, shakes off a few pieces of torn flesh, and then reaches down for him again. And the second one’s come up too, and is reaching for Peter as Peter, too distracted with the rope, writhes against the bush.

Then a sheep rams into the side of the thing in front of Derek.

Derek blinks. The sheep’s still there—it’s the ram, and it skitters over the fallen thing’s body, scuffs the ground a little once it’s off, lowers its head and then charges the thing going after Peter.

“Okay, don’t _eat_ it,” huffs the shep—Stiles, right. He appears right after the sheep, gasping and leaning on his staff. “Trust me, that’s not going to…oh, looks like you figured that—that out. Okay. Um. Let me just—”

Stiles gets off his staff just as the first fallen thing starts to get up. He sucks in a breath like a drowning man, then shoves back his cloak and raises his staff, and brings its point down into the top of the thing’s head. Which…collapses in on itself, with a strange, slow kind of squish. A blackish fluid comes out, stretching into strings as Stiles grunts and pulls his staff free, and suddenly the thing has a smell.

“I hate this stuff,” Stiles mutters. He wipes the staff off on the grass and then goes over to the other one, and does the same time. Then he plants the staff in the ground and leans on it again, and wheezes a few times. The ram comes up to him, tentatively nosing at his free hand, and he gives it an absent pat. “So. Um. Sorry. I forgot about that trap, that was back when I thought the big deal on this mountain was going to be random omegas. Because, you know, I heard this was some kind of werewolf proving ground.”

Dazed, his mouth still paralyzed, Derek looks at him. Then looks at Peter, who’s staring at Stiles. So Derek feels a little bit better about the fact that that’s all he can think to do, too.

“And you guys _are_ werewolves, we’re not still pretending you’re not, right?” Stiles says. “I mean, if I was rude just now about the omegas, I wasn’t trying to be. I’m okay with werewolves. Werewolves are fine.”

The sheep bleats.

“Well, okay, eating my buddies is not cool, but I’m not trying to _challenge_ or claim land or whatever it is you actually call it, the books weren’t really clear,” Stiles goes on, petting the ram again. “Anyway. So. New moon. Really bad time to be out, even during the day, so…you’re not going to get all with the rawr and mauling if I happen to take you in, will you?”

Peter glances over at Derek, who tries to…his leg is still numb and dangling. He tries to snarl, but he’s getting very dizzy and the cold is creeping down into his throat. All that comes out is a pitiful strangled noise that makes Stiles whip around towards him.

“Shit, don’t tell me you swallowed when you bit,” Stiles sighs as Derek keeps gagging, sticking his staff under his arm. He looks over his shoulder—they’ve run almost back to the farm, Derek suddenly realizes—and then takes a small pouch of something out from under his cloak. “Okay, I’m gonna pull a villain move. Sorry, but we have to hurry this up before you choke,” he says, just before puffing a powder into their faces.

Derek sneezes, stumbles onto his numb leg, and falls on top of Peter, who grunts and then manages a weak snarl. The world spins around and the last thing Derek remembers is the rising panic in Peter’s scent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bigfoot and its regional variations are often reported as having an unforgettably horrible smell.
> 
> Any way you cut it, there seems to be a big age gap between Talia and Peter. I've played around with that in different stories, but that'd seem to create natural tendencies towards miscommunication and tension, especially if she also ends up being a maternal figure to him. I don't think that's a huge inference to make since you never see their parents, and in the flashbacks Peter and Derek don't really have an uncle-nephew vibe, what with even young!Derek not showing much deference to him. That's easier to account for if Talia at least part-raised Peter, so her children see him as much as an extra sibling as an uncle.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing Derek sees when he wakes up is a sheep.

It’s standing over him and staring into his face. He’s warm, and smells a lot cleaner, and he’s lying on some really plush, soft furs. His hands are also tied in front of him, with a cord leading from the leather strap around his wrists to a metal ring bolted to the side of the chimney. He starts to yank at the strap and Peter lets out an exasperated sigh at his back.

“They’re dragonhide, you can’t tear or bite through them, and you can’t shift,” Peter mutters. “Because clearly, _someone_ doesn’t believe in mutual trust.”

The sheep makes a low noise and then clops off across the…living half of the farmhouse. It’s not the ram; the ram’s over in the corner with Stiles, and seems to be helping Stiles grind up grain. When Stiles rolls his eyes and gets up, the ram and the other sheep position themselves at either side of the stone rolling pin and continue pushing it back and forth across the half-crushed powder.

“Yeah, sure, because that’s a great idea when I’ve got a flock of sheep and I’m letting a couple strange werewolves sleep inside,” Stiles says. He doesn’t look over, just flaps a hand at them and then goes to check a bubbling pot hanging over the hearth. “And I’ve got it on good authority that I’m a pretty tasty-looking morsel myself, too.”

“We don’t actually eat people,” Derek mutters, twisting over. 

He gets his arms underneath himself, but that’s about as far as he can get: his leg isn’t numb, but it’s also responding very slowly, taking a good two seconds to curl his toes when he tries. He shifts over onto his hip and looks down at it, then sucks in his breath.

Derek actually sees Peter’s legs first, because the raw-looking rope burns twisting around them look so red in the firelight. But Derek knows that look and it’s actually a good sign, showing that somebody put on the correct type of wolfsbane so they’ll heal. What’s more worrying is that the mark on Peter’s side looks darker.

Peter hisses in warning when he sees where Derek’s looking, then jerks his chin at Stiles. “It’s just a stress reaction,” Stiles says, stirring the pot. “You know, the marks getting lighter or darker. They’ll go away eventually. The bad sign is when you get numb.”

Which is what’s the matter with Derek’s leg. He’s got handprints around both ankles now, and when he pokes his calf, the flesh takes longer than normal to plump out. He thinks it looks paler too. “What’s wrong with it?”

Peter grimaces in disapproval, but Stiles answers right away. “Revenants wither up whatever they touch, but they’re _not_ vampires, let’s be clear,” he says. “They don’t live on your life-force, they just take it. But if it was just temporary exposure, it’s totally reversible. Gave you the herbs already so just eat a lot of meat and hey, you’re a werewolf anyway, that should come with the territory, right?”

This time Derek looks at Peter, who mimes a deep sigh and then shrugs. Then he twists over and pulls himself up to the edge of their pile of furs. He’s tied up like Derek, and there are red lines around his wrist-strap like he’d struggled some, but he doesn’t smell particularly afraid. Just wary.

“Provided we can find it,” Peter says dryly. “The mountain does seem to be in short supply.”

Stiles looks up, then grins. “Oh, noticed that, did you? Yeah, I know, and it’s been two weeks since I saw even a decent-sized hare. You guys are lucky I had any chicken left. Another couple days and I’d be down to the salt pork and dried fish.”

“And if we can get out,” Derek mutters.

“What, with them throwing a temper tantrum out there? I’m pretty sure you guys can’t survive being mashed with boulders,” Stiles goes on. He picks up a couple empty bowls and ladles out some stew, and then carries it over. “I know the whole tied-up thing is not really trust-inducing, but I’m doing the best I can here. Seeing as _I_ don’t want to be eaten _or_ mashed.”

Peter lets out an exasperated sigh but goes straight off for the stew, not even sniffing for poison. “We don’t _eat_ people,” he says.

“Fine, maul me or turn me or whatever. I have enough going on without having to worry about another lunar phase.” Stiles sees Derek hesitating and pokes the second bowl closer. “Chicken with dried peas. C’mon, it’s good. I’ve had a _lot_ of time to get my cooking chops down, believe me.”

“You don’t talk like somebody who lives out here all the time,” Derek says. He picks up the bowl but just plays with the spoon.

Peter looks up, frowning. Stiles just looks curious. He’s definitely closer to Peter’s age than Derek’s, now that Derek’s seeing him close-up. The big brown eyes make him look young, but his cheeks aren’t rounded out with baby fat, and the cheekbones topping them have that sharpness you only see in adults.

“What do you mean?” Stiles says. “I’m pretty sure I got rid of my accent.”

“Accent?” Peter says.

Stiles makes a little bit of a face, and then gets to his feet. “Haha, I see your wedge question and…what the hell, we’re stuck here till the new moon’s over. Yeah, I’m city-born, all the way from the capital, but how—”

“You don’t curse like it,” Derek says. He can feel Peter looking at him funny and stuffs some stew in his mouth just to have a reason to not look back. “Not enough animal metaphors.”

“Derek,” Peter mutters irritably, clearly thinking Derek’s just embarrassed them.

But Stiles just grins again. Then he laughs, turning away and walking back to where the sheep are. “Oh, man, of course that’d give me away, I’m not creative enough with my insults. Okay, good one, I’ll work on that, and—”

Just then there’s a noise outside. It’s muffled and distant, and Derek honestly can’t tell what it is, but the two sheep both jump to their feet. Stiles can’t possibly hear it, but he jerks around at the same time the sheep do.

“Look,” Peter whispers, nudging Derek, and Derek follows his line of sight to an oddly-shaped bundle of sticks hanging from the rafters.

There are more of them, spaced out around the room. They’ve obviously been deliberately twisted together, with twigs bent back on themselves and tied in place, but they’re not shaped like anything Derek recognizes. Most of them have a whitish bead, maybe of bone, tied to them.

“Should be far enough off,” Stiles finally mutters, staring at it. But he doesn’t sound that certain, and after another moment’s staring, he suddenly pivots away from where he’d been going.

Instead he goes to the wall and takes down a big jar—it’s filled with salt, Derek smells. He carries that through a doorway, and from the hay-scent coming through, that’s the way to the barn. Meanwhile, the sheep use their hooves to nudge the grindstone out of the way and up against the wall, and then they trot after him.

“Did you ask him about those?” Derek says.

Peter raises a brow. “The _sheep_?”

“Well—they’re not _normal_ , and they took out that one revenant, whatever that is.” Then Derek puts his bowl down. “Do you know what that is? Can you tell if he’s just making it up? You’ve been talking to him for a while, haven’t you?”

“If by ‘a while,’ you mean the hour or so after I woke up, because he was rubbing burnt wolfsbane into my leg and you are extremely fortunate you slept through that,” Peter says. He’s a little irritated, but it passes quicker than usual. “He did most of the talking. I was trying not to answer unless he got annoyed, in the interest of keeping what little advantage we have.”

Derek suppresses an impatient noise. Even if…even if it looks like Peter might not _hate_ him, the man’s still a pain to get to the point. “So what’d he say?”

“We’re werewolves. And we’re werewolves. _And_ we’re werewolves.” Peter looks amused. “I think we might be the first ones he’s actually met. But he does sound like he’s read a lot about us.”

“The stuff you read?” Derek presses.

“Probably. Maybe. We haven’t really gotten to know each other enough to trade book recommendations,” Peter says dryly, and then his tone turns savage. “You were out cold, Derek, and I was tied up, and he obviously can do some serious harm, and don’t you think I’d have other things on my mind?”

“Oh,” Derek says after a second. He fidgets and remembers he has the stew, and eats some more but doesn’t pick up the bowl again.

Peter sighs. His bowl clinks down and Derek glances over, noting it’s almost scraped bare, and then Peter’s head settles on his shoulder. “I should be flattered you think I’m that coldblooded, I suppose.”

“I just figured you’d work on a way for us to get out, soon as you were awake,” Derek mutters. He moves his head over, making room for Peter, and then Peter goes and rolls so they’re pressed together from ankle to shoulder. Some fur rumples up between them and tickles Derek’s belly, and he shivers. Then drops his head as Peter nuzzles in behind his ear.

“Yes, well, I was starting to think about that,” Peter says. He pauses, then tilts his head so that his brow is pressing into Derek’s skull right above the ear. He takes a deep breath and then it feels like—he actually trembles for a second. “But I don’t know about right now. If he’s right about the new moon…you had a mark all around your mouth. No, don’t—you’d need a mirror to see it, Derek, even if it was still there. He dumped bottles of some herbal concoction down your throat but your whole face felt like ice for forever.”

Derek starts to ask what Stiles fed him, and then decides he actually doesn’t want to know. The memory of what that revenant had tasted like suddenly comes flooding back to him and that’s bad enough, and he’s just…he’s glad Stiles made it go away.

Peter keeps nuzzling at the side of his head. “Angelica, feverfew, no wolfsbane, actually…and he kept telling me the _sheep_ would show me how to make it if I was really interested. You know, I’m sick of them already.”

He sounds a little more like himself, with how indignant he is, and Derek can’t help a snort. Then Derek takes a deep breath and turns. Peter looks back at him, blinking slowly, curious but clearly expecting Derek to be the one to do something. “You,” Derek starts, then swallows. “You did smell me, didn’t you?”

A flicker of irritation goes through Peter’s eyes. “Well, you smelled all hot and bothered over the Argent woman too, so obviously I couldn’t put much stock in—”

Derek kisses him and Peter shuts up. Peter actually shuts up, and if this always works that well, Derek thinks, maybe he’ll get less nervous about doing it.

The cords leashing their wrists have a lot of slack, but it’s still awkward to get their arms around each other. Derek tries but Peter doesn’t like being squished into him and ducks out, and then pulls Derek back down onto the furs. He slides up and straddles Derek’s waist, resting his hands on Derek’s chest, and laps around Derek’s mouth instead of kissing Derek. If the flesh there had gone numb, it’s completely fine now because Derek feels every little flick of Peter’s tongue and then some. They tickle, but that twitching sensation goes on even when Peter isn’t touching him, making Derek squirm till he finally pushes at Peter.

He’s just trying to get the man to stop and get back to kissing, but Peter slips on the furs and rolls over onto his side. Derek pushes up to follow and his knee slides off Peter’s thigh, in between Peter’s legs, and the unexpected dip mashes his open mouth against Peter’s shoulder. Though Peter seems to like that, from how his scent spikes with arousal, and when Derek gives his collarbone a lick, Peter hitches his legs and his cock suddenly comes nudging up along Derek’s leg. It’s not hard—not _yet_ , but…

A hoof clops loudly against stone. Derek jerks his head up and only now hears Stiles’ footsteps, a second before Stiles comes back into the room. “Good thing I boiled up a bunch of salt last…oh,” Stiles says, looking at them. His feet stutter a little and then he pulls himself up, but there are red spots in his cheeks. “Um. So. That is…actually my bed, and I was—I was going to sleep in the barn anyway but I don’t really prep for guests so I was hoping I’d get it back? In one piece? Sort of clean?”

Derek can feel himself flushing too. He twists off Peter, but forgets about the tie-out so the cord slews him and he lands harder on his side than he’d expected. And then Peter rolls over and throws a leg and an elbow across him, pinning him anyway. It’s not an accident, not with how Peter promptly scoots back so his head drops _behind_ Derek’s shoulder, making it so when he talks, he’s half-lipping at Derek’s skin.

“Sorry,” he says, using that slow, purring voice he deploys whenever he’s wheedling things out of people. “Didn’t know. That’s very generous of you with total strangers, your own bed.”

“Yeah, well, you’re hurt and it’s—it’s nice to have guests, even though I don’t expect—I mean, this is really out here and all and I wouldn’t call the skinner wagons _guests_ , that’s just business. And I really don’t want to get closer to them, they’re always looking at my buddies here like they’re measuring rugs and slippers out of them,” Stiles says. He’s so flustered that he gestures to a bucket instead of the sheep next to him; the sheep is eyeing Derek and Peter so steadily that Derek can’t help but read judgment into it. Then he walks sideways over to the shelves, and while he makes it without dropping the salt-cellar, he has some close calls because he won’t stop looking at Derek and Peter. “And for werewolves you’re a lot pret—uh, young—um. Um, less hairy? Yeah. Less hairy than I expected.”

Peter’s grinning. He’s moved his head up to rest his chin on Derek’s shoulder, but Derek can tell from how he sounds. “What did you think a werewolf looked like?”

“Well, there are these engravings. There’s always an engraving, right, can’t have a bestiary without those, and usually it’s your standard beefcake with a face like a tumor-ridden boxer,” Stiles babbles. He pats the salt-cellar, grimaces and stops himself, and then starts looking around with a panicky air. “Anyway, so, how was the stew?”

“Delicious. Wonderfully…juicy,” Peter says, just before turning his head and—Derek feels Peter’s mouth brush his ear and jerks away.

Peter growls in irritation. It’s too low for Stiles to hear, and anyway, Stiles is busy diving for a chest. He fumbles it open, takes out a book, and then practically runs back into the barn, saying something about great, enjoy it, he’s going to redo some things so they don’t get made into stew.

“But I don’t think those revenants wanted to eat us,” Peter says, dropping the flirty tone. “Did they? When he comes back, we should—damn it, _Derek_. What is the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Derek mutters, jerking his leg out from under Peter. It’s his numb one, so in the end he has to brace his other knee to get it out, but that’s the last part of his body and then he can curl up free of the other man. “What? You can ask him anything you want.”

For a second Peter stares at him. Then the other man turns away, shaking his head in disappointment. That’s usually the end of it, but just as Derek’s folding himself into an unhappy lump, Peter’s head comes back around. “I was wrapped around _you_ ,” he says. “How on earth could you be jealous of him?”

“I’m not jealous. I said you could talk to him,” Derek snaps. He sees the contempt coming in Peter’s eyes and snarls under his breath. “You can flirt just fine without me, you’ve done that up till now, so maybe I just don’t—if it’s just going to be that. You can do it, I just don’t want to be in it.”

Peter pauses. His lips pressed together, he keeps looking at Derek and he’s frustrated but his scent has a bit of uncertainty in it. “Derek,” he finally says, very careful with each word. “I’m trying…I’m thinking of how to get us out after the new moon’s over. You can smell it on him whenever he looks over—a dead werewolf could. I’m just trying to find something we can use.”

“I know. I mean, I guessed, I’m not _that_ slow,” Derek mutters. He’s not lying. He did have some idea about it, it just…it sounds simpler and more intelligent when Peter spells it out. But it still doesn’t sit that comfortably with him, and when Peter makes a movement towards him, he holds where he is. “I just don’t see why you need _me_ for it.”

“Well, because he obviously likes how you look too, and the more distractions, the greater the odds of success,” Peter explains, his patience clearly strained. “And I don’t want to just do it myself. For one, I really don’t think you’ll still be _not jealous_ if we handle it that way. And he’s rather pretty himself, it’s not that much of a hardship.”

“So what?” Derek says, staring at the floor. “Kate was pretty. Even you said so. Didn’t make it any better when we found out who she really was.”

“Which is why we’re the ones who are doing the fooling this time,” Peter snaps.

“So we’re Kate now?” Derek says.

It’s very quiet. So quiet that when a hoof clicks against the stone floor, Derek flinches so hard he slips off his knees. He can’t not look up, righting himself, and Peter…isn’t looking at him. Peter’s staring off across the room, a distant expression on his face that Derek can’t quite read. As Derek moves, Peter’s head ticks slightly to the side, but he’s just listening, not looking over.

Eventually, Peter lets out a sigh. He shifts down to lie on his belly, then frowns as he sees Derek’s bowl, which is still half-full. Then he reaches out and knocks it towards Derek with the back of his hand. “Don’t be a martyr,” he mutters.

“I said you could do whatever you wanted, just leave me out of it,” Derek says. He doesn’t move over.

Peter grimaces and then he finally glances at Derek. “But you don’t like me much when I’m that way, do you?”

“I don’t…I’m just not you,” Derek sighs. “I know you know what you’re doing, I just—”

“I don’t think I do, actually,” Peter says. He blinks hard, surprised at himself. Then he pushes his arms out and drops his head onto them. “Talia’s never going to let me take you anywhere again at this rate.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t like the way Peter’s slumped over. So in the end, he crawls over to the bowl. He hears Peter inhale sharply and stops, but when Peter doesn’t say anything, he starts eating.

Something touches his hip, then his back: Peter, sidling up alongside him. Derek hesitates and then presses back, and Peter immediately leans his head against Derek’s side. “I don’t think you’re like her,” Derek mumbles around his spoonful. “I just meant it reminds me, and I…really don’t ever want to remember her.”

“Sensible, I wouldn’t either,” Peter says after a moment. He sighs a little, then moves his head to Derek’s back. “Well, it’s not the only approach we could take and I’ll think some more. We don’t have much else to do, at any rate.”

Derek puts his spoon down, then twists so that he can cross his ankle over Peter’s. “Okay.”

“Baa,” says a sheep.

Both Derek and Peter look up. The ram’s standing a few feet from them with a book at its feet. When it sees that it has their attention, it scoots the book towards them and then ambles off.

“Peter,” Derek starts.

“All right, all right, we’ll ask about them,” Peter mutters. He shakes his head, then levers himself up and gets the book. “Nosy little things…just as well it’d be rude to eat them now, for all we know their meat would brainwash us into following Stiles around too.”

* * *

The book is about revenants, and talks about everything from how they’re created—somebody does have to die, but you only need a little piece, like a fingerbone, to make one—to what they’re good for—guarding things and assassinations—to how to destroy them—salt-cured wooden stakes if you can’t just set them on fire. Which is all interesting, and Derek isn’t being sarcastic about that, he really does understand this is the kind of thing he needs to know. But the useful parts are embedded in a lot of mathematical calculations, because revenants apparently work on the opposite lunar cycle as werewolves, stronger as the new moon approaches, and also there’s some other stuff about how the sorcerer who called them up in the first place needs to do astrological…things.

Math is not Derek’s strong point. He tries to follow along, but eventually Peter sighs and tells him the equations are hard enough to keep straight without Derek’s confused grunts distracting him. He says Derek should just go to sleep, and he’ll wake up Derek whenever he gets to something that doesn’t require conic sections, whatever those are, to understand it.

Derek doesn’t mind getting to skip the math but he doesn’t really want to doze off. Stiles and the sheep are in and out all the time; they don’t stick around long enough for Peter to ask what they’re doing, but they’re obviously hurrying to finish whatever they’re doing in the barn. Which clearly has to do with keeping off the revenants, and with the approaching nightfall and the occasional menacing noises from outside that make them all freeze. Stiles does keep saying that the revenants can’t come into the building, but he also keeps making jokes about how tasty he probably looks to them, so Derek doesn’t want to take everything out of his mouth at face value.

Anyway, Derek puts his head down and Peter stops reading aloud, but Derek does try to stay awake. He manages it for maybe half an hour and then the fact that he’s barely slept in the last few days catches up with him like a sledgehammer.

The nap doesn’t really make him feel much better. When he starts twitching awake again, the half-realization of what’s happened makes him angry with himself and gives him a little bit of a headache. His leg still feels heavy and wooden, and there’s an annoying groaning noise coming from somewhere, like wind coming through a cave. He growls into the furs and Peter shushes him urgently enough that Derek’s irritation instantly turns to fear.

“It’s okay, they always make that noise,” Stiles says. He’s sitting near them, doing something that makes a _shnick_ sound over and over again.

Whittling bolts for the crossbow lying next to him. It’s pointed at them, but the bowstring is slack and while Peter’s tensed up next to Derek, the man is facing the opposite direction. “Does it mean anything?” Peter mutters, not sounding very reassured. “Are they communicating? Coordinating?”

Stiles puts his knife down and squints at the top of the bolt. He’s more nervous than he sounds, his shoulders twitching every time the moan comes. Over in the barn half, Derek can hear the sheep whickering nervously to each other. “They don’t really have brains, just the instructions they got when they were made,” he says. “Like golems, except for the whole spun out of dead flesh and unmitigated evil bit.”

“Well, golems famously go mad _when_ they’re left to their own devices,” Peter says dryly.

If anything, Stiles seems delighted by the sarcasm. “You _totally_ read the _Lesser Grimoire_ ,” he says. “Come on, admit it, you’re lusting after the library you think I’ve got packed around here.”

Derek twitches, but he’s so pressed into the furs by Peter’s weight that he’s not even sure Stiles knows he’s awake. Stiles isn’t looking over at him, anyway. As for Peter, he snorts but it’s on the stiff side. His fingers slide up Derek’s back and then lift, but it’s just to swing the tether out of the way; they come right back down and start playing with Derek’s hair, with the occasional warning tug mixed in.

“Normally I would, I’ll admit, but right now I’m more interested in the identity of this person who’s giving the revenants their instructions,” Peter says, calmly enough. He’s a little stiff about that, too. “Unless the answer to that’s in certain historical volumes I may suspect are in that library of yours, but that’d mean that this problem is at least a hundred years old.”

“I see you fishing for history,” Stiles says. He puts down the bolt he’d been examining and then gets up on his knees and starts bundling the bolts together. “Also, I see Derek there going red, maybe you wanna let him breathe?”

Peter starts atop Derek. Then, with an annoyed huff he doesn’t quite hide, he pushes off to Derek’s side, while Derek grudgingly pushes up his head. “I was okay,” Derek mutters.

“Sure, right.” Stiles stands up, then bends over to retrieve the crossbow. From the left a sheep comes up with a dustpan and a handle-less broom, and with some fancy hoof-work, starts sweeping up all the wood shavings. This is apparently normal because Stiles steps around the sheep without looking, and only gets an awkward expression when he turns to Derek and Peter. “Anyway, I need to go take some potshots at them, if you two, um, would like some privacy.”

“I’d like some clothes,” Derek says.

Stiles gives him an odd look, while Peter groans under his breath and elbows Derek. Then Stiles shrugs and goes back to loading up for a trip outside, grabbing crook and cloak and a pack for the bolts. “Okay, I can look when I get back, but I’m not promising any high fashion. I don’t think either of you are going to fit into my spares, first of all…is he _really_ your uncle?”

Derek blinks, then turns to a slightly embarrassed Peter. But Peter’s not answering, just making a face at his hands, so finally Derek nods.

“Hmm. All right, then, werewolves have interesting family structures,” Stiles says, and then immediately flushes. “Not that I’m judging, I mean, I hang out with sheep, and I might be so isolated up here that I actually _haven’t_ heard all the jokes, but I’m pretty sure I’ve worked them out myself. Which is not to say me and the sheep are even like that, okay, because—”

“How long are you going to be gone?” Peter interrupts. His eyes flick uneasily to Derek and then go back to Stiles. “In case something goes wrong.”

“Oh. _Oh_. Don’t worry about that, the sheep’ll know. Anyway, the best thing you can do is to just stay inside,” Stiles says, waving a dismissive hand. “All the stones this building’s made of are shot through with salt, it’s the safest place for miles. If I can get back, I’ll get back, but otherwise, you’re not really going to be that helpful.”

“But if you don’t get back, we’re tied up,” Derek points out.

Stiles waves his hand again. “Ah, you’ve got company, don’t worry about it.”

He apparently means the sheep, since he only takes the ram with him. The other ones stay behind; they don’t move out of the barn area, but occasionally one comes and peeks through the doorway.

“The revenants are strongest for the new moon and the two days immediately afterward,” Peter tells Derek. “They’re centered around the passes—this farm’s actually just half a day from the old werewolf one.”

“Okay. So you told him our names and about our family?” Derek says.

Peter makes a face at him. “Not about our _family_ , just about us, since even if we’re not going to flirt with him, we should try to get his sympathy. And what I said was it’s traditional for young werewolves to go out and try to form their own packs, and it was too crowded where we live so that’s why we wandered out here.”

Derek actually hadn’t been accusing Peter like Peter obviously thinks, he’d just been surprised that Peter would volunteer personal information. Doing it as part of a half-true story seems more like Peter, so Derek relaxes. “Right, and why shouldn’t I ask for clothes?”

“You actually picked up on that,” Peter says, blinking hard. And then he keeps blinking, and the corners of his mouth twitch against a yawn, and Derek suddenly notices how tired Peter smells. “Oh, well, I suppose that probably was stretching it, anyway…most of his werewolf knowledge seems to come from hunter accounts of omegas. You know, we’re all feral man-beasts who reject the trappings of civilization…I thought he might say more if he thought we weren’t sophisticated enough to understand it.”

“I don’t think you’re very good at playing a country bumpkin,” Derek says after a moment.

Peter’s eyes narrow, but then he snorts a few times. It’s not too far off a chuckle, and when he suddenly curls up next to Derek, he’s got a faint smile on his face. “He’s talkative enough without that, anyway. Very lonely.”

“I kind of guessed from the sheep,” Derek says.

“Oh, them. I asked, he just said he brought them because that’s what you do in this area,” Peter says, sounding sleepy. “He did say they all grew into it, so I wonder if he did something to make them this way…he’s not showy about it, but he does know a lot of magic…”

Just then a sharp neigh from one of the sheep makes Derek freeze. Peter doesn’t get up but his eyes snap wide open.

“I don’t hear anything,” Derek says after a strained few seconds. As he does, the sheep start moving around again in the barn. He rolls over and looks at his tether, but he doesn’t think it’s long enough to let him crawl up to one of the windows.

“It’s those things hanging from the ceiling,” Peter says quietly. He’s staring up at them. “It’s some kind of early-warning system, but he didn’t explain how you read them.”

Derek looks up. Eventually he figures out that they aren’t all moving at the same time, or spinning in the same direction, like they would if they were just being moved by drafts. Some of them are even moving against the push of hot air coming from the hearth.

“Well, he just went out, it’s probably about what he’s doing out there, right?” Derek says. He looks at Peter, and then down at Peter’s leg. The rope burns have all closed up but knitted skin is still rough and pink. “You’ll heal faster if you sleep some.”

Peter starts to pull up his knee, and then sighs and rolls so that his face is pressed against Derek’s arm instead. “Suppose there’s no worry about you going off,” he mumbles.

Derek rolls his eyes. Fiddles with his bonds for a moment, then shifts up a few inches. His arm moves away from Peter but that’s not why he did it; he moved so if something comes in the door or the nearest window, he’ll be in front of the other man. He slides his leg over Peter’s legs as a replacement, and after a grumble, Peter seems to take it, just tucking his folded arms under Derek’s.

“Wake me up if something happens,” Peter says. “And by ‘something’ I mean something I’d think I need to be up for, not what you think I do.”

“Yeah, fine,” Derek mutters.

* * *

Peter drops off quickly, a testament to how exhausted he’d been. That bone-rattling groan comes again, twice, but Peter doesn’t wake up. He does stir uneasily, pressing closer to Derek, and Derek ends up tucking his head into the crook of Peter’s neck to see if that settles the man.

It mostly does, though if Derek moves, Peter starts moving again. Which means Derek can’t really do much to pass the time—he can’t even reach the book Peter had been reading—and most of the time there aren’t any groaning or other weird noises, and it’s hard not to get so bored that he dozes off. Even with the threat of a supernatural monster he barely understands hanging over him—he’s not sure if that’s a good or a bad skill for him to have, but anyway, he resorts to scratching out a tic-tac-toe board on the stone floor.

When he hears Stiles coming back up to the barn, Derek’s actually grateful for a second. Then he remembers that this is somebody who drugged them and tied them up.

“Hi,” Stiles says, coming in. He looks at Derek again, then sighs. “Or not-hi. Either way, I’m home, and I hope dinner’s ready because tonight’s going to be a doozy.”

A couple sheep trot out of the barn and come up to Stiles, baaing and nudging at his legs. He smiles at them but keeps his hands out of the way till they back off, and then he puts down the crossbow and a very empty-looking bag. His crook is stained again and he keeps hold of it as he disappears into the barn half.

The sheep go over to the fireplace and kick some more wood onto the flames. Stiles comes back, without his crook or his cloak, and putters around, checking the pot that’s been simmering away all day over the fire, chopping up more vegetables to add and feeding the tops to the two sheep. His shirt has rips running down one sleeve as if he got raked over by something, though he doesn’t smell bloody.

“He all right?” Stiles asks, hefting a couple buckets and heading towards the barn again.

Derek glances down at Peter, who just then rolls onto his back and lets out a grunting snore. “Yeah.”

“Okay. His leg looks better. I mean, it should look like that, right? We’re not skipping any kind of important middle stage?” Stiles says. “Because I’ve got a little bit more wolfsbane—not a lot, it’s not really an herb I do a lot with, I just bought it because people swore up and down that this area is infested with werewolves—”

“Yeah,” Derek says.

Stiles closes his mouth. One of the sheep brushes up against him, then looks up hopefully, but he’s frowning at Derek. “Well,” he finally says. “Okay, then. I’ll just…tend my sheep, why don’t I. Yell if something boils over. Or grunt, or whatever you’re comfortable with, I guess…”

“I need to piss,” Derek says, because he does. And maybe because the other sheep is just standing there and staring at him and for some reason he thinks it really doesn’t like how he’s acting and it might come over when Stiles has left the room. They’re just so weird. “And what about the clothes?”

“Oh, right. Um—hold that thought.” Stiles dashes into the barn and Derek hears him knocking around, apologizing to startled sheep. It’s not quite loud enough to wake Peter, but Peter rolls back onto his side and stops snoring.

Then Stiles comes back, bucket-less. He crosses the room and goes up to the hearth where Derek and Peter’s tethers are tied, then unknots Derek’s. Then he takes a couple steps backwards. He looks at Derek, then at the tether, and then gives the tether a half-hearted tug, looking…well, sheepish. The actual sheep at his heels is giving off a faintly exasperated air Derek recognizes from Peter.

“So…wanna use the toilet?” Stiles says. Then his eyes widen. “Also, um, just so you know, I don’t need my crook to kick ass. It’s not a wizard’s wand or anything, it’s just a really great stake. And sometimes a good bludgeon, but anyway—”

“I’m not going to eat you,” Derek mutters, rolling his eyes. He fidgets where he is, then goes ahead and rolls up onto his feet. Peter grunts in his sleep and Derek considers waking him, but Stiles smells so embarrassed that Derek doesn’t think he’s plotting anything, and toilets are pretty boring.

So Derek stands up. Slowly. The feeling is coming back into his leg, but it’s slow, and it’s…for some reason he keeps thinking it’d be like when he’s been out in the cold too long, all jerky pins and needles, but it’s not. It’s just like the muscles get gradually weaker as they get closer to his ankle, and it’s not so much that they’re numb as they just don’t feel like they’re there, even though he can see them.

Anyway, he manages to not fall. He’s wobbling a lot and wishes he was close enough to the wall to lean against it, but he doesn’t fall. Comes close when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and starts, lifting his head and baring fangs that don’t actually drop.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Stiles says, holding up his hands. He scuffs in place, watching Derek sway and sort of hop off the bedding. “I just…you know, if you’re not going to maul me, or act on that anger about me, um, kidnapping you two, I could…I make a good leaning post, I’ve been told.”

Derek grunts and takes another hop, and then teeters so much he ends up going to one knee. Which hurts like hell, since he’s off the furs and onto the stone now. Sure, it heals up the moment he rolls off that knee, but it still hurt first.

“Or I guess werewolves are stiff upper lip types,” Stiles mutters.

When Derek looks up, Stiles is very busy picking hay out of his sheep’s wool. That’s bad enough, but then Stiles starts whistling, and Derek just—he shakes his head, then hisses to get the man’s attention. “Could you not wake Peter up? He stayed up more than me, these past few days.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Stiles whispers back. He glances at Peter, then back at Derek. Then he blinks hard.

Derek tries hard to ignore the flush he can feel building in his face, and jerks his hands impatiently. “Can I lean on you or not?”

“Yep, yeah, wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it,” Stiles says, hurrying over. He does an odd bob-and-weave around Derek, then ducks Derek’s attempt to grab his shoulder and instead hauls Derek up by the waist. He’s stronger than he looks, though sweat’s already beading on his face from the effort. “Nope, put your hands down and keep your teeth that way, thanks, don’t want any misunderstandings.”

“You’re odd,” Derek says without thinking.

Stiles snickers. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”

Derek…decides to just stop talking at that point. Especially since the ram pops up on his other side, pushing against his leg. They shuffle across the room and Derek ends up grabbing at the ram’s horns, and the ram doesn’t object, and Derek—really does need to relieve himself at this point, so he also just stops thinking about exactly how they get to the toilet, and works on doing.

The set-up is a lot nicer than the manure pile he was expecting: they go into the barn side and it’s divided up with wooden walls into stalls. There are obviously more than Stiles needs for the size of his flock, and while most of them look like they’re storage, two turn out to shield access to a tiny mountain spring coming out of the outcrop. One well in each stall lets Stiles get drinking water and dispose of waste, respectively.

“Well, so long as it’s flowing strongly enough, because really, the worst backwash in the world,” Stiles says, peering into the well. “But we’re okay, lots of meltwater and the revenants haven’t figured out hydraulic engineering, at least…go ahead. Just try not to splash it outside the rim, please.”

He backs off as far as the leash will let him. Derek braces his hip against the top of the well, then levers up a knee onto that and looks over the edge. The hole’s barely big enough for his shoulders to fit through and it’s so dark he can’t see how deep it is, but the sound of the rushing water’s pretty strong.

“I cannot figure out a non-awkward way to say this, but do you need a hand?” Stiles mumbles, staring very hard over the top of Derek’s head.

“No.” Derek doesn’t want to swing both legs over the edge, but he can’t hold his cock and hold the rim at the same time. In the end, he works himself down and sort of curls around the well-hole so he can use his elbow for extra balance.

“Oh, okay. I guess that works,” Stiles says, still not looking. He’s blushing so furiously that a perverse part of Derek wants to tell the man he might as well have a glance, if he’s going to risk bursting a blood vessel like that. “Um. So I’m not _actually_ some perverted maniac holed up here, just waiting for really attractive werewolves to wander by. I’m really not.”

Getting off the rim is awkward too, and Derek concentrates too much on not touching his damp hand to anything and ends up flopping hard onto his knee again, with an extra bash to his elbow on the way down. He hisses and then bites his lip against the jolting pain of his joint cartilage knitting. Then he looks sharply up as a shadow falls over him.

“Wipe?” Stiles says, dangling a rag in front of him. When Derek’s done with it, Stiles holds out a bucket for disposing of it, and then hangs that back on the wall as Derek struggles back up. “I’m actually kind of surprised anybody shows up anymore. I mean, I read that omegas come here, but in six months I think I’ve heard one howl, and that was over by the garrison.”

“It was Peter’s idea,” Derek mutters. Then winces at himself for giving that away.

“Yeah, he seems like the whole, let’s go where people say not to type,” Stiles says. Casually, like they’re just chatting, and not like he’s pouncing on information. “So he’s really your uncle? I’m just asking because you guys don’t look that…unless werewolves age differently? Or maybe your childbearing period is a lot longer than people?”

Derek can’t help making a face. “I wouldn’t know about that. The childbearing thing.”

“I guess not,” Stiles says, looking over. His eyes drift down and then he makes an eeping, embarrassed noise and quickly twists away. “So, clothes. So you’re definitely not going to fit my stuff, but I’ve got a couple blankets I guess you can tie creatively around yourself, or something.”

He’s just so…not threatening, right up till he does something Derek can barely believe. It’s not just how he looks, with the skinny frame and the flailing hands and doe eyes, it’s the way his heartbeat’s always fluttering, and how his scent whipsaws between amusement and excitement and embarrassment so fast Derek actually thinks he’s getting a scent-headache. The whole package is weirdly…up front. It makes Derek think this _has_ to be the way Stiles really is, just because who could keep up all of that by acting?

“He’s really my uncle,” Derek finally says. The stall’s small enough for it so he limps over and uses the wall to brace himself. “Why are you so interested in how old we are, anyway?”

“I don’t know, because I’d feel better if I was staring at some amazingly well-preserved centenarians, I guess,” Stiles mutters, scrubbing at his reddened cheek. “And that’d make more sense. You’re up here as long as I have, sometimes you start to question your reality.”

Derek looks at him. “I thought you said you’d been here six months.”

“Yeah, but it’s been a really, _really_ long six months,” Stiles sighs. “Yeah, so I know how to kill a revenant, but they’re still terrifying, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees. He smells Stiles’ surprise before the man fully shows it on his face, but he really can’t argue that one. “Listen, if you just let me shift, I don’t need the clothes. I just want to have something if I have to go out. And I promise—I promise on my mother’s claws I won’t try to hurt you unless you hurt me or Peter first.”

Stiles blinks a few times. “The mother’s claws is a big deal for you guys, I’m guessing?”

That was a stupid thing to say, Derek realizes with a grimace. “Never—”

“Hey, look, the whole excited to talk to actual people thing aside, I’m not going to keep you guys prisoner,” Stiles says. Then he winces. “I mean, I know I currently _am_ , but that’s just because of the new moon. When that’s over, I’ll let you go. It’s just maybe you might get some macho idea about the revenants and go out when you shouldn’t, and I know I’m taking the choice from you but you have _not_ seen what these things can do, and I have. And call me selfish, but I just really don’t want to find the first people I’ve had non-business conversations with in months shredded all over the mountain.”

He looks earnest about what he’s saying, and he smells…more than a little desperate. It’s a funny time for him to smell like that, when he’s got all the advantages, and suddenly Derek thinks Stiles is speaking from experience about the shredding. It’s on the tip of Derek’s tongue to ask and make sure, but then Stiles gives him a nervous but hopeful little smile and…Derek realizes the man’s asking him for something. To not fight, and people never ask Derek for things, let alone for that.

“So it’s just you and the sheep?” is what Derek ends up asking instead.

“Yeah, I mean, they’ve turned out to be surprisingly fun company, don’t get me wrong.” Stiles pushes open the stall door and then moves over so Derek doesn’t have to step away from the wall to walk out. “But you can only put so much into a baa, you know? And just between you and me, it’s really nice to talk to somebody who’s not going to faint if you mention your grandma’s holiday roast.”

Derek snorts and Stiles smiles at him again. Then the sound of rustling furs catches Derek’s ear and he winces, and glances over even though there are several walls between him and Peter. He’d better just shut up, he thinks. Even if he knew what he was doing, which he doesn’t, he’s only just gotten Peter to explain _why_ the man had been so touchy around him, and he hasn’t even gotten to enjoy that.

“Wait a second,” Stiles says, opening another stall. He steps halfway in, then comes out with a rolled-up knitted-wool blanket. “Don’t make fun of the lumps, I’m still figuring out how to not drop stitches.”

“What are you even doing here?” Derek asks. Stiles stops dead in his tracks, staring blankly over the blanket, and Derek has to fight down the urge to duck his head and pretend he hadn’t said anything. “It’s not just for the sheep or knitting or things like that. You could do that closer to the garrison, where there are more people.”

“Oh, that,” Stiles says, and for the first time he looks reluctant to answer. He tucks the blanket under his arm and heels the stall door shut, and then leads Derek back towards the living quarters. “That’s a really long story.”

He doesn’t say anything else till they cross the threshold. Peter’s awake and his brows arch a little upon seeing them. Derek’s glad that Peter doesn’t smell annoyed or jealous, but on the other hand, he’s not that reassured by the amused little quirk to Peter’s mouth.

“I needed to piss,” Derek mutters to Peter.

“Relieved now?” Peter says, lifting his brow. He sits up and holds out his hands to help Derek get down onto the bedding, and then intercepts the blanket as Stiles tosses that over, sniffing at it and picking at the knit. “Hmmm, I suppose we could belt it over you like a horse-blanket. But I’m not sure it’d do much for things below the waist, it’s a bit short.”

Derek rolls his eyes and pushes the blanket around Peter, and then, feeling a little irked—nothing’s even happened yet, and he gets blamed for plenty without adding that—he deliberately folds himself up so his head’s on Peter’s knee, and the rest of him isn’t where the blanket is draping. He feels a little weird about it, especially when he smells appreciation coming off both of the other two, but it’s worth it just to see Peter go speechless for a second. “You keep it, you like it so much. I just thought I’d ask.”

“I’ve got another one, you know. No need to fight over it,” Stiles says, amused, as he ties Derek’s tether to the metal ring again. Then he glances up at the ceiling and a worried expression crosses his face. “Dinner’s up in a little bit, but I need to check the shutters for the night. Be right back.”

He goes into the barn again. Peter watches him till he disappears, and then looks down at Derek. “You’re more mercurial than expected,” he says, and Derek can hear the silent _nephew_ after it.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t just spring things on me, and let me think them over,” Derek mutters. He takes his head off Peter’s leg and starts fluffing up the furs around him so they’ll cover him. “And I’m not trying to distract him, I’m just trying to figure him out. It’s not that I’m just being flaky either, and if you hadn’t brought it up in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have even thought about him—”

“Derek,” Peter says, but it’s not a reprimand. It’s a little too surprised for that. And then Peter shrugs off the blanket and slides down next to him, and the way Peter checks before he cups his hands over the point of Derek’s shoulder, that’s surprising too. “Derek, I wasn’t…I’m not trying to rile you all the time, you know.”

“Not really,” Derek says. He stares at his hands, then takes a deep breath and turns to look at the other man and Peter kisses him mid-breath.

Slow, with a nibble at Derek’s lower lip at the end that makes Derek rub his hips into the furs and then flush. Peter smells it and makes an amused noise, but then leans over to nuzzle at the side of Derek’s neck, more reassuring than teasing. “Even if I wasn’t very sure that I’m quite unforgettable, you’ve never been flighty about your interests. Unlike your sisters.”

“Sometimes I think I just don’t like nice people,” Derek says under his breath.

Peter is still for a moment. Then he pushes himself up, but it’s to move closer, not away. Draping his one arm across Derek’s back as far as the tether will allow, then craning around the cord so that he can lay his cheek on top of Derek’s nape. “I’m nice,” Peter says. He speaks quietly, but as his tone goes on, it gets firmer and firmer. “When I want to be. And despite all you do to drive me insane, Derek, I do want to be nice to you. You’re much more pleasant when you like something, and now that you like me, I want to see that more often.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like you before,” Derek says after a moment. Peter promptly snorts into his neck and he hunches his shoulders. “You just keep getting me so mad I forget.”

“Well, then you should work on your memory,” Peter says loftily, and when Derek tries to elbow him, he uses the chance to roll Derek over, and climb up to spraddle over Derek, chest to chest. He bends down and kisses Derek again, then laps at the edge of Derek’s jaw. “He is interesting, isn’t he?”

Derek can’t help his shiver, but he still bumps his knuckles into Peter’s shoulder. “You’re _already_ getting smug.”

Peter snorts and then arches himself up. Derek doesn’t know what he’s doing, reaching for something, looking at something, but the movement swings his chest over Derek’s head and Derek exhales in frustration right at that moment. And then watches as the nipple above him tightens from the puff of breath. Not something Derek would’ve ever even thought to look for before, but—he doesn’t think, just lifts his head and licks.

The noise Peter makes is something Derek absolutely isn’t going to forget, shocked and breathless and very, very pleased. And then Peter wobbles enough for Derek to shove them over onto their sides; Peter’s knees pinch Derek and drag him along, but neither of them are fighting, really. Derek just ducks the swinging tether and zeroes in on Peter’s nipple again, and—

“Baa.” The sheep standing at the edge of the bed looks down at them till Peter takes an exasperated swing at it with the slack of his tether. Which it easily side-steps, and then it continues to side-step away from them, heading back to the hearth, its eyes slightly narrowed.

Peter glares at the sheep. “ _Those_ aren’t interesting, just so we’re clear.”

“But he really does like them, I don’t think you can pretend he doesn’t,” Derek says. When Peter turns back, brow raised, Derek makes a face and shoves at Peter’s chest and then sighs. “He’s kind of funny. Sometimes on purpose. And even with the drugging, he’s nicer than you.”

“Now you’re just provoking me,” Peter says after a moment. He sounds stern but there’s an amused glint in his eye. “Derek—”

A moan echoes across the mountainside. It starts off low but builds up and up till it seems to be pressing down on top of them, heavy-bellied like a thunderhead. It’s a revenant’s moan but it has a different feel from before. This moan, Derek thinks, this one’s a warcry.

“Derek,” Peter says again, very quietly. His fingers curling tightly around Derek’s arm.

“Yeah,” Derek says, and shifts closer to him, shivering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revenant is a really broad English term that covers a lot of variations on the undead person (vampires and zombies would both fit as subgroups). Tons of cultures have some version of a revenant, and while I'm drawing from several traditions to make my own mash-up, I'd call out the Nordic _draugr_ as a particular influence (draugrs are a little like if you made an ogre into a zombie).
> 
> The new moon is often seen as the time best-suited for working black magic, because it's the time of the month when there's the least possible light at night.
> 
> The concept of an elliptical orbit hugely simplified astronomical calculations. Before Kepler came up with ellipses, they had to do all sorts of shenanigans to make the math match up with what was happening in the sky. So if you hated geometry in school, just think, that's the stuff that used to confuse the smartest geniuses of their generation.
> 
> In this universe, werewolves default to poly. I'm kind of playing around with how being somebody who's used to thinking in terms of the group, from stalking and hunting down to who qualifies as "us" vs. "other," would see potential relationships.
> 
> Another mental subtitle for this story is, "The Sheep Judge Everybody."


	6. Chapter 6

“You can’t really do much but wait it out,” Stiles tells them after dinner. He yawns into the crook of his arm, then winces as his spindle suddenly clatters to the floor. A sheep pushes it back to him and he picks it up, sighing, and respins over the break in the yarn. “In the daytime you can go out and nail them, but they’re too thick at night.”

Once the sun went down, the moaning stopped, but in its place they started hearing heavy, tramping steps that circle around and around the farmhouse. Occasionally there’s the distant crack and thud of a felled tree, and sometimes the earth shakes, but so far the revenants don’t seem to be ripping up the ground the way they had last night. They just keep stalking the farm.

“I take it the other night was just reconnaissance, then?” Peter asks. When Stiles looks over, Peter pretends as if he’s more interested in pinching the lint off the blanket puddled around his lap. “You went out, even though it was night-time.”

“Told you they were stalking us,” Stiles says to another sheep, who flicks its tail at him and then trots off to the barn half. “Yeah, I did, but that was mostly because of you. I figured they’d be distracted, what with the fresh meat and all, and figured I’d see if they found you or not.”

Wood snaps, much too close for it to have happened in the trees, and Derek jerks up before remembering he’s still tied to the hearth. He makes himself settle down, but more wood is shredded and he can’t help looking at the nearest window.

“Not that that really seemed to help. Not sure why I bothered going out today, either,” Stiles mutters. He lets the spindle run out of wool again, but this time when he picks it up, he just shoves it and the unspun wool off to the side. “The new moon lets them come out during the day, but they’re still slower. They don’t do that vanishing thing so much, so you have time to aim.”

“Where do they go when they’re not here?” Peter asks. He’s working hard at not sounding nervous.

“No idea, and believe me, I’ve crawled all over this mountain looking. It’d be a lot easier if they just all went to ground in some cave I could firebomb, but they’re not vampires,” Stiles says. The third time wood snaps, he flinches—in the barn half, a lone sheep bleats and then they all go quiet—but he still strolls over to the hearth as if he’s not worried. “Want some coffee?”

“Aren’t they at the fence?” Derek snaps, unable to help himself any longer. He yanks at his tether, then shoves his wrists against the stone floor, grinding at the strap around them even though he knows it won’t wear down the dragonhide. He’d feel better if he could just have his claws out, he thinks. “That’s past the salt line, doesn’t that—”

Peter knees him in the left buttock, knocking him off-balance enough that he falls onto his elbow. “Salt dissolves, Derek,” he says.

“Yeah, and it hasn’t rained lately, but it’s still pretty damp up here, which makes the salt leach and opens up breaks in the line,” Stiles says, ladling himself a cup from the fireplace kettle. “And if I put too much salt in the ground, it kills the grass and the sheep can’t eat.”

“So feed them to those things,” Derek mutters.

Stiles twists sharply around. “Hey, they saved your life, asshole.”

Derek opens his mouth, then closes it. Two sheep are looking out through the doorway and a third is standing behind Stiles, and they’re all looking at him with squinted eyes. Beside him, Peter sighs and drops his face into his hands.

“Sorry,” Derek says. The sheep keep glaring at him. “ _Sorry_. But—look, what’s the point of keeping the grass if those things can come right in here?”

“Well, they can’t, because one, there’s salt in these stones,” Stiles says. He taps the floor with one foot while swigging his coffee. “Two, it’s not like I just did _one_ line out there, and I did have time to go over the closer ones earlier. Three, I put stuff on the fence rails to slow them down. It’s not as good as the salt, but like I said, you just have to last the three nights and then they calm down. Well. Relatively speaking.”

“Which is why you’re planning to stay up all night,” Peter says dryly. When Stiles looks at him, he nods at the cup in Stiles’ hand. “Derek wasn’t that tactful, but he’s got a point.”

Stiles starts to say something sharp, then catches himself. He’s still irritated when he turns away, pouring himself another cup. “You’re in the safest place for miles, okay? Trust me.”

Derek lets out an incredulous noise. “We’re tied up and we can’t _shift_ and my leg is still messed-up—”

Peter rumbles a warning at him and he snarls back. Then avoids Peter’s gaze as he flops back down, only to start up as the revenants break another piece of the fence.

“Yeah, I know, and I’m—this is awkward at _best_. I know that.” Stiles still isn’t looking at them, he’s looking at the shuttered window, but the frustration is gone from his voice. “I probably should’ve just yelled at you to get off my mountain or something like that.”

“We didn’t look that handsome upon first meeting, unless you’ve a taste for wolves in general,” Peter says. He’s teasing, but his tone’s a little strained. He’s looking at the window too.

“You were kind of mangy-looking,” Stiles says. Then he glances over, brows rising, as Peter sputters indignantly. A grin flicks over his face and then vanishes as he gets up and goes to the window; he doesn’t open the shutters but they can be tweaked so he can peek through them. “But it was still pretty obvious you weren’t normal wolves. You two were doing that whole keep your head down, no _you_ keep yours down routine.”

Derek blinks, then looks at Peter, but Peter looks just as puzzled. Then Peter sucks in his breath, his eyes widening slightly as he figures it out, and he actually looks chagrined. “Wait,” Peter says. “That means…”

“What, do you think I just keep chicken tied to my crossbow bolts because I figure the revenants will appreciate it?” Stiles says, smirking a little. He reaches up and touches one of those twig bundles, then backs up from the window. “Obviously I saw you guys coming way before you actually made a play.”

Peter grimaces, catches Derek watching him, and doubles down on the grimace so much that Derek impulsively leans against him. The corners of Peter’s mouth tighten and Derek thinks the man’s going to take it the wrong way, but then Peter sighs and curls down next to Derek. He tugs the blanket around so they can both fit under it, then starts flicking at the tips of Derek’s hair.

“Anyway, it’s just this night and tomorrow night,” Stiles finishes up, muttering into his coffee. It sounds like he yawns in the middle of it. “And after that, you two can head off and not deal with this, or me. I’ll draw you a map.”

“What are they after, anyway?” Derek asks. “Even if you don’t know where they’re coming from—”

“And why are _you_ concerned about it?” Peter throws in. “This hardly seems like ideal sheep-raising conditions.”

The sheep narrow their eyes and stamp their hooves, and then the ram comes in and snuggles up against Stiles’ leg, looking plaintively up at him. Though Stiles doesn’t seem to be offended. “Oh, nope, I know, I don’t know why these guys put up with it,” he says, absently patting the ram. “It’s not even what we came up here for, this is just…like community service, almost, except those assholes back home wouldn’t even credit me for that because they don’t even believe revenants still _exist_ , which was the whole problem in the first—”

 _Crack_. The sound is so ringing that Derek winces and bites down on his lip by accident, deep enough to draw blood. Stiles’ head snaps up and he stares at the twig bundles—half of them are swinging wildly, while the other half are dead still—and then, as if it’s an eggshell and not thick pottery, he sets down his mug.

“It’s okay,” he says, his voice a little higher and tighter than before. The sound of more wood splintering filters in and he side-steps around the anxious-looking ram, then reaches over without looking and pulls his crossbow off the wall. “They throw stuff all the time. I’ve rebuilt those fences so many times that my blisters have blisters, and let me say, the lumberjack thing? Harder than it looks.”

“Metal shutters,” Peter says under his breath.

Derek looks at him, but Stiles starts talking again before he can read Peter’s expression. “They don’t really _want_ anything, they just drive out anything living that’s bigger than a squirrel,” Stiles says. “That’s the idea, make this place into an uninhabitable wasteland. Not that people were really using it anyway, but the, um, thing the books don’t say is if they kill you, you turn into one of them. So even if the one who made them is taken out, if you don’t get rid of them all? Eventually they build up into an army again.”

“So that story’s true?” Peter says, sitting up. “These are left over from _that_ war? They’re that old?”

“Well, at least one of them,” Stiles says. He’s looking at Peter with an appreciative look that’s…not actually creepy, it’s more like the man is just grateful somebody’s listened to him, and that actually is what makes Derek edge closer to Peter. Even though Peter looks far too excited to notice. “I mean, the clothes rot off pretty quick so it’s hard to date them, but yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

“But then who were they killing to make new ones?” Derek says, as things start to connect for him too. He wishes they didn’t; the thought makes him shiver as soon as it pops into his head, half-formed. “This is the pass nobody but werewolves uses, isn’t it?”

A tiny, stupid part of him is hoping that Peter will tell him he’s just being ridiculous and of course that isn’t what’s going on, he’s just missed something obvious again. But the second he looks over at Peter, he knows the other man won’t. If anything, Peter looks as if _he_ wishes somebody would tell him he’s being ridiculous for taking Derek seriously.

“Look, they’re not going to get in,” Stiles says, a little more loudly than he needs to. “I’ve been through six of these and it sounds like hell anyway, so no point in sleeping, but that’s all it is. They just stomp around and tear up my fences and throw stuff around, but it’s not like they ever actually get close to hitting anything—”

Something crashes down on the roof. It’s so thunderous that Derek somersaults in his hurry to scrabble up against the wall, with his foot hooking part of the blanket and tossing it up over his head. He must get Peter too, because Peter’s cursing and thrashing and kicking his knees—Derek squirms the other way and gets his head out of the blanket, and amazingly, the roof’s not caved in.

It is still shaking from whatever’s just fallen with it, with showers of dust coming down all over the place. Eerily, the twig bundles are hanging stock-still, as if they’re attached to a completely different building.

“I should—um—I guess everybody gets lucky once, right?” Stiles says, shaky, with a stiff, unconvincing grin on his face. He tries to grab his mug and gets his hand all the way to his mouth, and then notices that he doesn’t have it anymore. Because it rattled off the counter and now it’s shattered all over the floor, with the coffee soaking into the gaps between the stones. “I’m—I’m gonna go—I’ll go up and see—”

“I think we should all leave,” Peter says suddenly. “Look, whatever you’re being paid to do this, or if it’s not that and they’re threatening you—”

“We’ll pay you more. Mom will, anyway, I think she’ll be fine with that,” Derek says. He checks on Peter but Peter isn’t so much as twitching in disapproval. “And if it’s threats, we’ve got a really, really big pack back home.”

Stiles is blinking slowly at the spilled coffee, as if he’s still trying to figure out how that got there. When he finally looks up at them, he’s still got the same dazed look on his face, so Derek starts to repeat what he’d just said, only to have the man suddenly twist angrily away.

“It’s the middle of the night and they’re _strongest_ at night, were you not listening?” Stiles snaps. He snatches up his crossbow, dives across the room for a chest and pulls out a fresh bundle of bolts, and then storms off into the barn half. A ladder thumps down and then Derek hears the whine of metal hinges. “I know what I’m doing, all right? Just let me do it!”

Then the trapdoor, or whatever he’s using to get to the roof, slams shut. Derek winces, then slumps down. Then sneezes as some sawdust, which is still sprinkling down from the rafters, gets up his nose.

“All right,” Peter says firmly, as if they’ve just been offered a choice instead of being abandoned. When Derek turns and looks the obvious question at him, Peter rolls his eyes and jerks his head towards the chest in the corner, which Stiles has left open in his hurry. The edges of some books are just visible, as are some knives. “Clearly, we’ll have to try something besides appealing to him.”

* * *

Peter decides to talk to the sheep.

It’s not the dumbest idea, under the circumstances. Stiles doesn’t seem to be coming down any time soon, and the chest or anything else that’s useful is too far for them on their tethers. It’s just…well, if you’d asked Derek first, he maybe would have pointed out that the sheep already know he and Peter don’t like them.

“Well, it’s not for you, it’s for him,” Peter hisses at them, so exasperated that he pushes his face into his hands. He drags at his hair, then heaves his head back up and glares at them. “What, do you _want_ him to die out here, all alone, the heroic figure holding back the flood of darkness, even though nobody actually _cares_? Oh, that’s a _wonderful_ fate. They’ll write such a beautiful epic about it.”

The sheep look at him, and then go back to pushing around broomheads, trying to clean up the dust.

“Fine, then I hope you all get torn apart and repurposed into undead creatures!” Peter snaps.

Derek presses his lips together. He wants till Peter’s flopped face-down into the furs and Peter’s breathing has slowed a little, and then he clears his throat. “They do write epics about that kind of thing.”

“But only if somebody hears about it. So who’s going to tell people? Me? You think I’m going to immortalize some idiot who doesn’t know to get out of the way of his own silly do-gooder impulses?” Peter growls at him.

“I’m just saying. And maybe we should not talk about getting eaten?” Derek says.

Peter moves his head enough to bare one bloodshot, glowering eye. Then he huffs and rolls over to show his back to Derek. “Why don’t you try saying something, if you know what they want to hear?” he mutters. “Why do I always have to do the talking? Is that all I’m good for?”

“No, I wasn’t…saying that,” Derek sighs. He already knows there’s no point in arguing with Peter when Peter’s in that sort of mood. His mother always shoos out everybody and then takes Peter off and nobody knows _what_ she does, but she usually manages to bring Peter back in a non-murderous mood, if not completely happy.

But his mother’s not here, and that’s the point, and they’re stuck in a salt-laced house while Stiles sits up on the roof and does…something.

“What’s he doing, anyway?” Derek says.

The sheep pivot and stare at him, and—they don’t even have expressions. They can’t move their muzzles as much as a wolf can, and yet, they’re still managing to make him understand they think he’s dense.

“I know he’s trying to fight them off, I didn’t mean that. It’s just what’s the big deal about telling us how he ended up here doing that?” Derek says. “Does he think it’s embarrassing or something? We don’t even know him, what does he care about impressing us?”

They keep staring at him and Derek hunches up, then makes a face and looks away. He’s starting to feel like he needs to apologize to Peter, because that stare is so damn unnerving…but then he hears one of them walking away.

He looks up and the sheep trots across the room to the barn doorway, where it stops. It lets out a short bleat, pauses expectantly, and then bleats again, a little more stridently. At that point Peter lifts his head, looking interested.

A baa drifts back, and a couple seconds later, the ram appears. It and the first sheep put their heads together and…chew? All Derek can hear is grinding teeth, no actual vocalizations, but then the ram comes over and right up to the bedding, checking Derek over.

“I have a question, too,” Peter says. He hesitates when the ram turns to him, then puts on one of his more sincere nice smiles. “He said he didn’t want to find our dead bodies and that’s why he brought us here, but is that just worry about us turning into more revenants? He could’ve just killed us and disposed of our bodies in some way that’d keep us from coming back, after all.”

Derek makes a face but…it’s a good point. “How would he even know we’d want to talk to him? We were trying to _eat_ you.”

“I thought you said we shouldn’t talk about that,” Peter says under his breath, with a poke of his elbow into Derek’s side. Then he straightens up as the sheep start to eye them suspiciously again. “Anyway, the point is, for all he knew when he first saw us, we could’ve been omegas who’d been feral so long we’ve even forgotten human speech. He’s desperate, I know, but he doesn’t seem _that_ insane.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t say he’s insane in front of them,” Derek mutters back.

The ram makes a noise and both Derek and Peter shut up and turn to it. For another moment it looks at them. Then it takes a step back, pauses and looks at them again. Starts to turn and pauses _again_ to look at them. Its head swings from side to side, and then it goes purposefully over to that open chest. After nosing around in it for a few seconds, it tugs out some kind of parcel.

Derek cocks his head. “Wait. That—that looks like—”

“Is that my _book_?” Peter says indignantly, shoving himself up on his elbows.

The ram stops. Peter presses his lips together, then takes a couple deep breaths and slowly slides back down. He pushes his palms down flat against the floor and smiles at the ram. It’s kind of toothy, but the ram slowly resumes walking over. It sets the parcel down in front of Peter and then steps back a few feet, keeping its head low—not a submissive gesture like it’d be with a wolf, Derek has to remind himself. Not with those horns. Which had knocked over two revenants.

Peter obviously gets the warning because he reaches out and tugs the oilskin loose with fingertips only, his eyes staying on the ram the whole time.

“What happened to our horse?” Derek says.

“Really, Derek?” Peter mutters, flipping open the book.

“I’m just asking,” Derek says. “It wasn’t a bad one, and we’ll have to explain that to Mom anyway, and…”

He looks at the ram, who dips its head again, but with a much less aggressive air. Actually, with how the ram’s eyes are closed and the sad tinge to its scent…oh. Derek grimaces. “It didn’t turn into a revenant, did it?” he asks.

The ram shakes its head. Then goes on alert again as Peter makes another outraged noise. “He marked up my diary! There are little notes all over this!”

“You were keeping a diary?” Derek says.

“Handbook. Record of things I find useful,” Peter says, so sarcastic even Derek can tell he’s just trying to be nasty enough to not get any more questions. Then he sighs and slumps down till his forehead’s almost resting on the top of the book. “All right, fine, it’s a diary, so what? It’s much less destructive than the way you sulk and then get on your sisters’ nerves, and then all three of you go destroy family heirlooms.”

“It was a broken old bench that always gave me splinters,” Derek says.

Peter rolls his eyes and then goes back to paging through his…diary. The ram looks back and forth between them, then edges off a few more steps.

“What’d he write?” Derek asks. “Is it about us?”

“No, he’s changing my ratios,” Peter says, sounding irritated enough that Stiles must be right. “Well, why doesn’t _he_ try and make out that spider-script our Emissary uses, and when I’ve only got a couple minutes at a time to look at those herbals…”

Derek tries to peer over Peter’s shoulder, but just then Peter pushes himself up till he’s sitting cross-legged. “I thought Mom said you couldn’t break into the apothecary anymore.”

Peter snorts. “Yes, she did, didn’t she.”

This time when Derek tries to look, Peter headbutts him. Derek jerks back before the man actually touches him, then shuffles around and tries to read the book upside-down. “Did you put something about me in there? Is that how he knew about me?”

“This isn’t just to gratify your ego,” Peter says, snapping the book shut and nearly catching Derek’s nose. When Derek looks up, Peter holds the irritated expression for a second. Then he sighs, and softens the set of his shoulders—though the book stays shut. “If this is about a stranger now knowing more—well, first of all, I didn’t ask for that. Why would I? Our pack’s bad enough, I can never get one _second_ to myself without somebody barging in and demanding I say something. And then they never like what I have to say, but they ask for it _anyway_ …”

“Well, it’s not like I do a lot of that,” Derek says. “That’s more like Laura.”

The side of Peter’s mouth twitches and he smells faintly amused. He still doesn’t let go of the book. “No, that’s true. Your problem was you never would talk to me. And you can keep a secret, I’ll give you that.”

“Never mind, I don’t want to know what you have in there,” Derek says, a little pricked. He’d hoped Peter would just stop mentioning Kate—he should know better. “It’s probably just all the things I’ve done wrong, and I guess you tell me about those anyway.”

Peter tilts his head. He glances at the book, purses his lips, and then…doesn’t hand it over, but he does wiggle his fingers for Derek to come closer. And when Derek doesn’t, he moves, leaning over to nuzzle in at Derek’s throat till Derek sighs and lifts his chin to make it easier for him.

“I wasn’t keeping such close track that I noticed you were disappearing more than usual,” Peter mutters. “Not such a complete record as you think.”

It’s as close as Peter’s ever going to get to saying he thinks he screwed up the whole thing with Kate, too. And him just thinking he even should’ve been watching out for Derek—well, it’s weird, not like how he usually thinks. And better than knowing whatever he put in the diary, Derek decides after a moment.

He leans back against Peter. Lips brush at his neck and he swallows hard, then cocks his head as the other man nuzzles closer. “Guess it can’t be that bad, if he read it and figured he should find us and save us,” he mutters.

Peter pulls back, but whatever he’s going to say is cut off by the thump of the ladder. Hooves clop around in the barn and then Stiles appears in the doorway. He looks very tired, with a pale, sweaty cast to his face that has Derek automatically sniffing for injuries.

“Well, that should keep them off for at least a couple hours,” he mutters. He puts the crossbow down by the wall, then blinks heavily. Then shakes his head hard as he starts to stand up again. “Man, I need more coff—”

Then Stiles puts his hand back down on the floor. There’s something off about the way he’s stooped over, and Derek’s sniffing again when Stiles lets out a grunt, staggers onto his knee, and then slumps ungracefully into a lump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who didn't see my aborted [first attempt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9575102) at this story, I got this idea after watching lots and lots of _Shaun the Sheep_. I don't know why the sight of claymation sheep doing housework is so ridiculous in and of itself, but it is. So I swiped the idea.
> 
> Typically, you only ever have one adult male in a sheep flock to reduce fighting. Flocks don't have to have rams full-time, but if they do, the flock tends to follow it. Sheep in general have a strong follow-the-leader instinct. 
> 
> Not all modern sheep breeds still have horns, but for this story, I'm picturing a breed where the females are hornless and the males have pretty decent-sized curled ones.


	7. Chapter 7

The sheep go crazy, running up to surround Stiles while making panicked noises and then running away to smack at boxes with their hooves. Two slightly smarter ones disappear into the barn and then come back with slopping buckets of water swinging under their heads, but most of them stay around Stiles till the ram, who seems to be the most collected one, headbutts them out of the way.

“What’s wrong with him?” Derek says. “I still can’t smell anything.”

Peter’s crawled out as far as his tether would allow and is up on his knees, but from the way he keeps bobbing around, he’s not seeing much past the sheep. “They’re trying to take off his shirt…he’s breathing, I can see his chest moving. He didn’t break his nose when he fell, at least.”

The ram swings his head around and Peter starts like he might drop down. Then straightens up, his shoulders and chin pushed aggressively out.

“Missing something?” Peter says. “Like, oh, I don’t know, opposable thumbs?”

“Look, we can’t see,” Derek says, rolling his eyes at Peter. “Is he just too tired or—”

Behind the ram, the sheep suddenly part so they can see Stiles—and the wide grey band that wraps around the man’s torso. The way it’s shaped, it’s like…like one of those revenants grabbed him around the chest. Derek remembers the way his face froze when he bit the revenant’s arm, and how terrified Peter had sounded, telling him how cold he’d felt.

“Is that going to affect his lungs?” Peter asks after a second, without an ounce of sarcasm in his voice. “It’s over his heart too, what does that do?”

The ram looks at them, then suddenly hikes its head up. It scurries over to the side and tips back onto its hind legs so it can nod repeatedly at a box set up on a high shelf.

“That’s important,” Peter interprets. “Fine, but we’re over _here_.”

The ram is already moving, pushing off the wall and going back over to Stiles. It noses around in Stiles’ cast-off cloak, then comes up with a metal key on a loop of yarn. Eyes lighting up, Peter snatches for it, only for the ram to hop back.

“Oh, for—do you want him to just stay like that?” Peter snaps.

The ram shakes its head and puts the key on the floor. But as Peter reaches for it again, the ram’s hoof comes down sharply on the key. Peter jerks his hand back, lips pressed tightly together.

“We won’t run off,” Derek says, thinking he might know what the problem is.

“Well, we can’t, can we,” Peter says, glancing over. “Not with revenants stalking around this place.”

The ram tilts its head but doesn’t take its hoof off the key. Then it looks down at something on the floor: Peter’s diary. Derek swallows the ‘ah’ noise he’d been about to make and nudges Peter so he sees, too.

“Oh. Oh, well…well, it’s not worth yelling at somebody who can’t hear you, is it?” Peter says.

He’s a little reluctant but the fact that he’s even being sarcastic is a good sign. Not that the ram probably has any idea, Derek suddenly realizes, so he grabs Peter’s elbow with both hands. “Look, we’ll just do exactly what you say, and nothing else. Okay?”

For a second he isn’t sure it will work because the ram doesn’t move at all, not even a blink. But then the ram exhales—which sounds pretty close to a sigh to Derek—and slowly lifts its hoof. It twitches its head down when Peter promptly grabs the key, but doesn’t quite go into charging posture.

Peter tries to unlock his bonds, but he can’t twist the key around enough, so Derek reaches over, only to have Peter snarl at him. Derek stops and Peter unlocks the strap from around _his_ wrists instead, then holds the key out. For some reason Peter’s scent spikes with nervousness, and then that drops out as Derek frees him. Derek tosses the key aside and then looks up, and Peter’s smiling with relief at him.

Derek blinks. “ _Baa_ ,” the ram says impatiently, adding a hoof-stamp.

“Box,” Peter says, going over to the shelf.

When Derek goes to follow, the ram hits his knee. Not hard, but it’s enough to spin him around. Then the ram bumps his leg again so he goes with it over to where the cooking things are stored. He gets down the kettle it points out and one of the other sheep brings him a bucket of water to fill that up, but it and the ram get in the way when he moves towards the hearth, wrongly guessing that they want him to heat it up.

Instead they make him wait till Peter comes back with the box. It’s small and plain, but well-made with a lid so tightly fitted that Peter has to have Derek hold the bottom while he pries it off. Inside are small bags of powdered herbs; Peter pulls them out and dangles them one at a time till the ram pokes one with its muzzle.

Derek brings the kettle around and Peter holds the bag over it. “The whole thing?” Peter says, looking at the ram.

It nods. “Baaaaa.”

Peter dumps the bag’s contents into the kettle and Derek puts the lid on, then swirls it till one of the sheep starts headbutting him towards the fire. He rights himself and hangs the kettle over the fire, and then the sheep hits him again. Derek stumbles and nearly falls over, as his leg—which he hadn’t noticed till now, but it _was_ a lot better—collapses out from under him, and Peter has to catch him.

“What? What? We followed your directions to the letter,” Peter snaps, glaring down at the sheep. A couple more have come over and have surrounded both of them, and are gently but irresistibly shuffling them along.

“I think we’re supposed to go over to him now,” Derek says. “But it’s not even boiling yet. You know that, right?”

Following along behind and clearly orchestrating the whole thing, the ram shakes its head and then nods vigorously at Stiles. So Derek and Peter stop resisting and just go with it.

“You’re not limping so much,” Peter says, looking at Derek’s leg.

“You’ve almost lost the scars,” Derek says, checking out the other man.

Then they’re standing right over Stiles. The man doesn’t look _good_ , all pale and limp, but his heartbeat and breathing are both steady, if a bit sluggish. Then the ram pokes Derek with one horn, and when Derek looks at it, it stares up into his face before doing an exaggerated kneel down beside Stiles.

“Pick him up? Move him to the bed?” Peter guesses.

The ram nods. Peter sighs and stoops down. He lets out a long hiss as soon as his hands touch Stiles, suddenly smelling of discomfort and disgust. The sheep close in, but Peter audibly grits his teeth and sticks his hands under Stiles’ shoulders, so they back off.

Derek limps around to Stiles’ legs and grabs them, but they flop too much and throw off his balance, so after the first yard he tells Peter to set the man down and moves up to grab Stiles’ waist. And then he realizes why Peter’s making that face, because touching Stiles’ torso is like sticking his hands into ice-water. No, worse than that—water doesn’t have that clammy, rubbery feel, like whatever’s wrong with Stiles is going to crawl right into Derek’s own skin.

“Hurry up, longer you muck about, longer we have to touch,” Peter snaps at him.

Gritting his own teeth, Derek helps Peter heave Stiles back up, and then they shuffle across to the bedding. It’s not that far, but once they have Stiles back down—gently, under the beady eyes of the sheep—Derek plops down himself and finds himself gasping. And rubbing his arms and hands hard against the furs, even though they haven’t actually gone numb.

“ _Now_ what?” Peter snarls, and Derek looks up just in time to see a wary Peter backing up from the edge of the bed, while two sheep stand in front of him and…do a pretty good job of looking menacing, actually.

Then something brushes up against Derek’s arm and it turns out he’s got his own sheep minders. He moves back, but they keep coming forward, stepping onto the furs till he’s right up against Stiles.

“I think we’re supposed to keep him warm till the stuff in the kettle is ready,” Peter says. He sits down and starts pulling the furs over Stiles, but then the ram pushes to the front of the sheep wall and looks meaningfully at him. Peter makes a face. “But he feels—”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Derek says, and before he can think too much about it, he shifts to wolf and lies down over Stiles. He can’t help a strangled noise, but…no, actually, it doesn’t get better as time passes.

Peter hesitates for another second, but when the ram lowers its head, he sighs and starts to climb in next to Derek. “Well, then _you_ can explain to him what this looks like when he’s up again,” he mutters to the ram.

* * *

This is possibly the longest Derek has ever had to wait for a kettle to come to boil. He keeps thinking he’s _got_ to get used to the revolting chill of Stiles’ skin, and then he doesn’t, and then Peter growls at him for squirming like the other man isn’t doing the same thing, and when he finally hears the first plink of bubbles forming in the kettle, he whines in relief.

But then the sheep won’t let him get up. They go check on the kettle, fumbling with the hanging rod till they can swing it out and tap the kettle’s sides with their hooves, and they do that for several minutes before two of them manipulate a pot-holder around the handle, then bite into it and carry over the kettle. And _then_ one of them goes off to get a bowl. It’s all Derek can to do not bite anybody.

When the sheep finally back up, Peter slips off Stiles and twists into human form. “I’ll do it,” he says, lifting the kettle.

Derek bares his fangs at Peter’s back, then settles for turning human and just turning Stiles from his belly onto his back. He still has to touch the man, but at least it’s only with his hands. “So how do we get him to drink it?”

Peter turns around, filled bowl in hand, and frowns down at Stiles. He tilts his head back and forth, then hisses as one of the sheep makes as to headbutt his arm. “I’m thinking, all right? You don’t want us to drown him, do you?”

The sheep look at each other, then back off. Rolling his eyes, Peter turns back to Stiles. He starts to crouch down, then straightens up and motions with his free hand for Derek to lift Stiles. Derek grabs Stiles’ shoulders and Peter slides his hand under Stiles’ head as it starts to droop backwards. He massages around Stiles’ jaw joint and Stiles’ mouth falls open.

“Very slowly, I think,” Peter finally mutters. He holds the bowl over Stiles’ mouth, inhales sharply, and then tips it till a couple drops finally fall out.

They watch Stiles, but nothing happen. Peter shakes in a few more drops and they repeat. Then a few more, and a few more, and a few more, and Derek’s just about bitten through his lip in frustration when Stiles’ heartbeat suddenly takes a wild leap. He flinches, Peter jerks back, and Stiles flops out of both of their hands.

Then bounces up immediately, his eyes flying open. “Gah!”

“Ah.” Peter blinks rapidly, then pushes the bowl in front of him. “Stiles, your sheep—”

“Baaaa!” the sheep chorus, sagging against each other in clear relief.

Stiles looks frantically around, sees the bowl, sniffs almost like a werewolf and then grabs it. He downs it in one gulp and then gasps for air. Then he looks around again and ends up staring at his chest, poking at the slightly-faded grey mark and mumbling to himself about overdoing the coffee and his father giving him a hard time about single-minded something. He feels all over his front and then finally takes a huge breath, then lets it out as he relaxes.

“You okay now?” Derek says.

Stiles’ head flies up. He stares at Derek as if…as if Derek’s not supposed to be there. Then he whips around and looks at Peter the same way. And _then_ he does a pretty impressive sitting jump that almost clears the edge of the bedding.

“You’re loose!” he yelps. His head snaps back and forth and then he lunges off to the side—and promptly trips over the ram, who seems sorry about it but who determinedly plants itself between him and the crossbow he’d been going for. 

Stiles bats at it, then pushes at it, and then attempts to crawl between its legs. The ram resists as best it can, making noises so embarrassed that Derek starts to get up to help, but Peter stops him. Peter is very amused, but he shakes his head when Derek shoots him an annoyed look. “Oh, you’ll just panic him more. I think better just let him figure out on his own time that—”

“You didn’t eat me!” Stiles says, staring at them. He finally stops fighting the ram, but he’s still holding onto its rump as it…sort of pretends to look the other way.

Derek and Peter sigh at the same time. “We don’t _want_ to eat you,” Derek says. “For the last time.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, that—that was—” Stiles’ eyes dart around, landing on them and then the bowl and then over to the kettle before returning to them “—that was…that was…very…very nice of you. Um. Thank you. That was—that was not fun, and I, um, I appreciate the help but how did you get loose?”

Peter points at the ram. When Stiles gives it an incredulous look, a slow, very familiar, very pleased grin stretches across Peter’s face. “It also directed us to keep you warm with our bodies while your herbal mix was heating up, but I swear on my mother’s claws, it was all perfectly innocent.”

Stiles blinks twice and then promptly goes red in the face, while also smelling like his blush is the only thing that’s keeping him from enjoying it just as much as Peter is. Then he looks at the ram, who is working very, very hard at not looking back. “Oh…okay, then. That’s…great. Great. Always good to know when I was unconscious under a pile of attractive naked bodies.”

“You could’ve given us clothes,” Derek mutters.

“Well, I offered, and you turned it down and went with the whole let’s suggestively snuggle each other till I catastrophically slip up plan,” Stiles says. He’s still red but judging from how sharp his tone is, he’s recovering. “Which I did notice, by the way.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Peter says, irked. “Criticize us for trying to protect ourselves when _you’re_ the one who set this all up after reading my diaries.”

Stiles frowns. Peter points at the one diary, which is still lying off to the side. The embarrassment in Stiles’ scent gets so thick that Derek tenses up, since usually, people that humiliated lash out.

But instead Stiles just takes a couple deep breaths. He looks at the book, swallows hard, and then nods sharply. Then he gets slowly to his feet. He feels at the grey mark on his chest again, then goes over to the kettle and picks it up. Starts to walk with it, then comes back, gets the bowl, and takes them both to the washing-up area he has. The bowl gets rinsed out before he takes down a mug and fills it up from the kettle.

He puts the kettle down and starts walking around the room, looking up at the twig bundles while sipping slowly from the mug. Derek looks at Peter, who shrugs. Then Peter’s eyes go past Derek’s shoulder and he hooks his chin at the ram, which is inching along towards Stiles. From how heavy and dragging its step is, Derek would say it feels ashamed, but it’s holding its head up instead of hanging it.

“That before or after I passed out?” Stiles finally mutters.

The ram bleats right on the ‘before.’ Stiles makes a face as he finishes his sentence anyway. Takes a swig from his mug, and then sighs and looks down at the ram.

“Sure, make me into a creepy stalker instead of just a well-intentioned one,” Stiles says, but his heart clearly isn’t into it. “No, I know, I know, truth is the truth, but you couldn’t maybe wait till after I had my little fainting spell?”

The ram plants itself in place and looks up at Stiles till he flinches and turns away, muttering about it being unnatural to have puppy eyes in a herbivore. Derek feels more than a little uncomfortable—he obviously agrees with the ram, but the whole thing just feels a little bit like he’s peeking in on…on his mother and father arguing, back when his father was still alive.

Peter doesn’t seem about to interrupt so Derek finally clears his throat. “What happened to you anyway?”

“Huh? Oh.” Stiles jumps a little, like he’d forgotten Peter and Derek were there, and then he lets out an awkward laugh. “Nothing, just overdid it a little. Too much coffee and not enough sleep.”

“And before that?” Peter says. Then he sighs, cutting off Stiles’ obvious attempt at another joke. “Coffee and lack of sleep didn’t give you that mark.”

“Yeah, um, I should—one of us should stay dressed, at least,” Stiles says, sidling over to another chest. He opens it and starts to take out a fresh shirt, and then looks over at them. His shoulders slump, but at the same time, he’s curious. “You really didn’t eat me. Or try anything while I was out.”

“I think they would’ve been mad,” Derek says, pointing at the very interested sheep.

Stiles grins weakly, then looks down at the shirt he’s nervously fluffing. “Listen, your stuff…I try to stay in near the new moon, but your horse set off my beacons when they were killing it and it’s just so rare that somebody comes by…I went out to see and got your stuff, since it’s not like they pay any attention to that kind of thing, and okay, I started reading them. I brought forty-three books here and I can recite them all from memory now, that’s how many times I’ve read mine.”

Derek glances at Peter. Then he moves around for a better view, but Peter still looks—and smells—mostly puzzled. The man purses his lips a few times, raises his brows, moves his hand, and all of that looks like he’s stalling and hoping Stiles will take the burden off him by saying something else. He even looks at Derek, but Derek shrugs and doesn’t feel a bit guilty about it.

“Could you just tell us whether you’re likely to pass out again?” Peter finally says. He rubs at his nose, then at the side of his face. “Considering you’re the only one who knows how to ward the revenants off… _and_ how to tell when they’re coming near in the first place…it was quiet while you were out, but I don’t think it’s wise to assume that’ll happen again.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah…so these.” Stiles looks up at the twig bundles. Then he starts to reach for one, but stops, noticing his hands are still muffed in the shirt. He throws that on and pulls it down, and then stretches up to tap a bundle. “They’re linked to runestones all over this mountainside. This mark—” he points at a dark spot on one rafter that just looks like somebody held a candle-flame too close and charred the wood “—is here, and then you fan out that way. Counterclockwise if it’s going away, clockwise if it’s coming towards the runestone, still if it’s more than a hundred yards away.”

“If you’re so good at this, how come it’s just you here?” Derek asks. Stiles and Peter both give him odd looks and he thinks maybe he didn’t put it clearly enough. “I meant that this looks like a lot, and if just you can do all of this, wouldn’t it be easy to just send out a couple more people and clear out the whole pass?”

Peter settles back, so that _was_ the problem for him. But Stiles keeps eyeing him, like he can’t quite believe what Derek is saying. Then he lets out a short, sarcastic laugh.

“I’m not here because somebody _sent_ me,” he says. “Oh, man, if that were the case, I wouldn’t be rescuing werewolves just based on their doodles.”

Derek glances at Peter, who irritably flaps a hand at him, as if Derek isn’t going to just wait and ask again later.

“Look, up in the capital nobody even believes this is happening out here,” Stiles goes on, getting more and more heated. “I mean, _bodies_ were coming back. Pieces, anyway. But everybody’s all, nah, can’t be, they wrote songs about it so it can’t be real, right? So my dad, he’s the—he _was_ one of the captains of the guard. He thought we should at least send somebody to look around because _dead people_ , whatever’s causing it, but the capital is a mess and it’s all politics and end of story, we got exiled because he tried to do his job.”

“Ah, and you decided to come here and prove everybody wrong,” Peter says.

Stiles makes a face. Then he turns abruptly towards the hearth. He’s got his hand out and a stiff smile on his face, like he’s going to throw out one of his weird jokes and change the subject…and then he seems to change his mind, as his eyes rest on the kettle. “No, more like I figured if they were going to be like that, I might as well head to an obvious black magic epicenter and study up on the dark arts, and…yeah. So. I was gonna…do the bloody revenge thing.”

Near the end his scent starts to fill with nervousness, and it gets stronger and stronger till he finishes up with the kind of grimace that Derek normally sees when his mother is about to tell them that, despite all her efforts, she’s going to have to go fight someone. She’s usually very upset about that, even though if it’s gotten to that point, they’re all so sick of the problem that they have to sit on Peter to keep him from going out and taking care of it himself.

A couple seconds pass. Stiles fidgets with his mug, then scrunches up his shoulders and takes a quick peek over one. Then a longer look, and then his head goes up and he frowns. “I mean really, really bloody. I mean _black_ arts, like—”

“Well, yes, you’ve obviously read _De Vermiis Mysteriis_ in the original Latin, I got that from your margin notes on my diary,” Peter says, also frowning and confused.

“So…you’re okay with that? Not going to run screaming into the night?” Stiles says.

“Where there are revenants trying to kill us?” Derek says.

Stiles sighs. “Okay, yeah, that, but some people would consider hanging out with a guy who at least considered trying to figure out how to reproduce them to be a fate worse than death.”

“But…that’s because you were trying to avenge your family, right?” Derek says. “So?”

Peter suddenly makes an enlightened noise, and then he frowns again. “Wait, just _what_ have you read about werewolves? Why would you think we’d mind?” 

Still looking confused, Stiles gestures with one hand back and forth between Derek and Peter. Then he adds his other hand and does some odd arm-crossing movements, and then he just sits down on the floor, absently wrapping his one arm around the ram, who silently trots up next to him.

“So. Budding black magic practitioner here. This is cool with you,” Stiles says, sounding like he cannot believe they’d act like that.

Irked, Derek rolls his eyes, even as Peter’s shooting him a look. “We’re werewolves, we’re born into that, according to all the people who try to hunt us down. Anyway, with Peter Mom’s always telling him to stop stealing things from the druids, but it’s not like she ever makes him give that stuff _back_.”

Peter exhales a little, and it’s less annoyed than Derek was expecting. He’s even smirking, when Derek looks over. “My nephew’s blunt, but sometimes he does put things well. Anyway, as long as you’re not the type who’s trying to raze the earth just because, and never mind all the knock-on consequences, because I, for one, want to keep enough of civilization around that I can still get a hot bath, and cooked meat, and a good mail-order lending-library service…”

“What? Oh, no, I don’t hate humanity, I just hate the morons who forced my dad out and assumed we’d die in the wilderness,” Stiles says, flapping his hand. “I mean, that’s why this went all feet-up. Turns out the revenants really only will answer to the one who originally made them, and since she died over a hundred years ago, I got stuck out here—”

A revenant moans.

Derek and Peter and the sheep freeze. Stiles’ eyes snap up to the twig bundles, zigzagging hastily as he reads them, and then he winces. “…trying to kill them faster than they come up,” he finishes with a sigh. “Which, if I’m going to be totally honest with you, since you really seem way nicer about this than anybody who’s put up with me _and_ can transform into a ravenous plus intelligent beast should be…might not be working out so well.”

He sighs again, then heaves himself up onto his feet. Thumps the mug down on a chest and then stumbles his way towards the wall where the crossbow is leaning. He’s clearly on his last legs, but when the ram hurries after and tries to get between him and the crossbow, Stiles just gives the ram such a done-in look that, hanging its head, the ram moves aside.

“Speaking of killer instincts and brains. And a decent knowledge of the black arts,” Peter suddenly says. Then he glances at Derek. He’s a little tense…and then he gets offended when Derek _doesn’t_ get mad and demand to know what he’s going to do, as if Derek can’t predict him _once_ in a while.

Derek shoves at Peter’s hip, and then, while Peter’s busy glaring at him, he coughs to get Stiles’ attention. “Does it have to be you doing it, or can I kill one too?” he asks. “I’m still mad at them about my leg anyway. And the horse.”

“Oh. _Oh_ , sorry, was it—did you have it for a long time or something?” Stiles says, blinking. “The horse?”

“No, but it was ours, and I wanted it back,” Derek says.

Stiles blinks again. Tilts his head, and then shrugs. “Well, okay, I can work with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't remember what it was advertising, but there was this commercial that talked about how terrifying it'd be if cats had opposable thumbs, because their lack of them was the only thing keeping them from taking over the world. All kidding aside, there's a strong argument that the opposable thumb gave primates the ability to manipulate objects with such precision that it enabled the development of enough intelligence to result in human civilization.
> 
> Under normal circumstances, don't just pour liquid into an unconscious person's mouth. It's difficult to make sure you're hitting the esophagus and not the windpipe, and won't end up drowning them.
> 
> _De Vermiis Mysteriis_ is borrowed from the Cthulhu Mythos, because it has the best names for fictional books of evil stuff.


	8. Chapter 8

“So, these are salt bombs,” Stiles says, laying out a set of crossbow bolts with odd wool-wrapped heads. He strips the wool off one to show them the lump of salt crusted just back from the tip, then rewraps it. “You need to deliver a direct hit to the head to permanently disable them. Actually, it’s a direct hit to the center of the skull, which means you’re aiming for something about the size of this.”

Stiles holds up his fist, clenched to make it as small as possible. Derek looks at it and then at the crossbow, feeling a little less sure about this. He knows how to operate a crossbow, in that he knows he’ll be able to keep from shooting himself and most other types of misfires, but werewolves aren’t really that fond of range weapons. It’s the whole predator instinct thing: if they think they can sneak up and pounce, it’s hard to just sit back and wait for a perfect shot.

Peter looks a little dubious too. “Do you get more than one shot?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and Derek and Peter both relax. “Well, within reason. They’re dead, being stuck full of bolts isn’t going to distract them from charging you, though that can be handy for getting them within range.”

They look at him.

“I’m not saying it’s a good _idea_ , I’m just saying that sometimes you have to improvise,” Stiles says, looking a little sheepish. He moves on from the crossbow, of which there is only one, to the two rough clubs he’s also laid out. “Salt-cured wood. Obviously, smashing the whole skull in gets rid of your aiming problem, but then you have to be so close they can grab you.”

“Is that what happened?” Peter says, gesturing to Stiles’ chest.

Stiles blinks and then reaches up to tug at his shirt-collar, which has drooped to show part of the grey mark banding his torso. He’s a little flushed. “Ah. Kind of.”

“It looks like one of them bear-hugged you,” Derek says.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know if you noticed, but they’re pretty good at sneaking up on you,” Stiles mutters. 

He runs his hand over the top of his head, then rubs at his cheek. Then sighs and gets up, and goes over to the chest where Peter’s diary had been. He rummages around in it for nearly a minute, then huffs back up with a pile of very familiar books in his arms.

“You should probably have these back,” Stiles says, setting them down. His brows go up as Peter immediately snatches them to himself, giving Derek a defensive glower in the meantime. “So I might have gotten distracted by trying to collect all of them, and might have had to have my ass saved by—”

“Baa,” the ram supplies, looking tolerant.

“Anyway, it’s not too bad, I just…need to be sleeping more than I have, so my stuff will actually work,” Stiles says, tapping the fresh mug of undeadening juice, as he calls it, by his side. “Speaking of my buddies, they’ll help, but you need to keep in mind that if the revenants touch them, they have the same problem. It’s just that horns and hooves aren’t affected.”

Peter nods absently as he counts his diaries. “Noted.”

“What about claws and teeth?” Derek asks.

Peter looks up, and then over at Stiles as Stiles blinks twice before looking thoughtful. “Well, never got to try that, for obvious reasons,” Stiles says slowly. “But they’re a lot shorter, how would you stick them in without making skin contact?”

“We’re not alphas, Derek, let’s not act as if we’re invincible,” Peter agrees, shuffling his books beneath himself. “Anyway, these are all just deterrence measures. We’re not supposed to be fighting our way out and engaging the enemy.”

“Definitely not. Just get to morning,” Stiles says, just as a revenant moan drifts over the countryside. He pauses, smelling nervous, and then takes a deep breath. “The new moon’s almost over. So long as we can keep them from actually reaching the house, we should be fine. And then they’ll be weak enough that I can redo all the stuff they broke.”

“I thought you said they can’t get into the house,” Derek says. “Because of the salt in the stones.”

Stiles winces. “Well, yeah, but if they dig up half the mountain and toss it at us, getting buried alive isn’t great either. I mean, as it is, I’m going to have to take my poor buddies way out there to find any intact pasture even when this is all over…they’ve been getting more and more violent, every new moon.”

He starts to smell depressed on top of nervous, and he’s doing that thing where he stops meeting Derek’s or Peter’s eyes. Which is how he should be feeling, since he clearly had an idea of what he was getting into, and could’ve figured out he was biting off more than a whole pack could chew. But weirdly, even though Derek thinks that, he doesn’t feel that strongly about it. If anything, he almost wants to reach over and pat Stiles on the shoulder.

Derek can get the whole revenge impulse thing, and he guesses if he cares to think that hard about it, he’d have to admit he probably would overshoot that too, if it were his family. And even if Stiles seems to have let his loneliness override what actually would be the safest option for Derek and Peter, he did try to protect them. What Derek _isn’t_ so sure about is whether he’d still care much about strangers, if he were to start a vendetta.

“I’m sorry for, you know, luring you into sticking around,” Stiles goes on after a second, as if following Derek’s thoughts. “You know, with the food and all, and then drugging you, and tying you up, and not just sending you back down the mountain.”

On the other hand, even if Derek’s a lot less angry about it than he figured he’d be, all of that still wasn’t great. And on the balance…he’s too tired and worried to figure out what exactly he _does_ feel about it. He looks at Peter, and yes, he’s hoping the other man does have it figured out and will just say something, and that’s really selfish of him, but he never said he was fully mature either.

But Peter looks as torn as Derek does. He’s hiding it behind one of those blank expressions of his, but Derek can read the way Peter’s fingers keep sneaking down to touch his diaries, like he wishes he could get a moment to write in them. “Well…thank you for that, but I think we’d better deal with what’s outside first,” Peter finally says.

“Yeah. Yeah, anyway, so I guess just try and keep them back? It’s not that long till dawn and they tend to come in waves, so I don’t think they’ll try more than one more surge tonight,” Stiles says, looking both relieved and disappointed to be going back to concrete things. He drinks some juice and looks over the weapons spray, and then sits back. “So that’s the primer. Questions?”

Peter looks at Derek, who shakes his head. “I suppose we can always wake you,” Peter says.

Stiles nods and takes another drink, and then hides his mouth behind his wrist as he yawns. “Yeah, absolutely. I’m just going to be dozing anyway.”

Derek’s pretty skeptical about that, and he’s proven right when as soon as Stiles pushes the cup aside and lies down on the bedding, he promptly goes as slack as a ragdoll. Just a couple seconds later, he starts snuffling into the furs like Cora sometimes does.

“They sound like they’re mostly at this end,” Derek says, cocking his head and listening to the revenants tromping around outside. “But I should probably go up on the roof and check, right?”

“Just take a look,” Peter says, clearly reluctant about agreeing. He’s slow about it, but he hands over the crossbow and a fistful of bolts. Then he pulls Derek back by the arm and hands Derek one of the smaller furs. “Let’s not act as if revenants are the only thing that can numb you, Derek. And do try to _not_ drop anything, would you?”

Derek makes a face but puts the crossbow aside and drapes the fur around himself. He’s trying to figure out how to tie it in place when Peter slides back and attempts to sit down by where Stiles is lying, only to yelp in surprise. When he looks over, he catches Peter narrowly not planting his butt right on the horn of the placid, cud-chewing ram plopped between him and Stiles.

“Oh, for…” Peter grudgingly retreats a few inches and then pulls up a blanket around his lap. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

The ram looks at him, and then shifts slightly so that he’s directly between Peter and Stiles. Peter’s eyes narrow. Then he turns around. He grabs another fur and starts to fluff it out…which makes him move around Stiles, which means the ram edges around too. When Peter turns back and sees it, he rolls his eyes and then shakes the fur irritably at the ram.

“Well, do you want him to catch cold on top of everything?” he says.

The ram tilts its head, then stretches its neck out and opens its mouth. It waits as Peter makes faces at it and then finally gives up and hands it the blanket. For something without hands, it’s pretty good at flipping the fur over Stiles.

“That’s just insulting,” Peter mutters, watching. “Just what did you think I was going to do, anyway? He’s so asleep you’d need a boulder dropped on his head to wake him.”

“Baaa,” the ram says, stubbornly pointing its horns at Peter.

“I don’t think it’s that stupid. I guess they’re getting to know you,” Derek says, and then grabs up the bolts and crossbow before Peter can fully turn to him.

Another sheep leads him into the barn area and over to the ladder to the roof. It can’t go up with him, but it stands at the bottom of the ladder with its hooves on the next rung up and keeps bleating at him. Which is more than a little naggy, to be honest, but Derek bites back his growls and just hurries up the ladder.

He doesn’t really want to look, he realizes just as he’s got his hand on the trapdoor, ready to push it up. Even though the house is right up against the outcrop on this side and he’ll come out with salt-rich rocks at his back, and he’s actually got something to shoot back at the revenants with. And anyway, he’s a werewolf and _he’s_ a scary thing of the night too, and he…still doesn’t want to stick his head out.

The sheep baas at him again and Derek gives in and snarls at it. Then, hunching his shoulders, he braces his arm against the trapdoor and listens as hard as he can for any incoming missiles. When he thinks it’s clear, he sucks in his breath and then shoves up the trapdoor and squirms out onto the roof, trying to do that all as fast as he can, staying as low as he can.

He manages both of those but he doesn’t manage to be quiet: the crossbow bumps and rattles over the roof tiles and then he smacks a tile when he nearly drops one of the bolts. Thankfully, the tile doesn’t crack or fall off, since he wasn’t thinking about reining in his strength.

Derek sticks the bolts into a crack between two tiles and then hurries to load one into the crossbow—he probably should’ve done that before he popped out, he thinks with a grimace. Then he jerks up the crossbow and squints across the wrecked paddocks to the dark figures moving against the treeline.

It’s cloudy on top of the recent new moon and even were-sight can’t make out too much, but he thinks there are four of them, with maybe a fifth moving further back where it blends into the trees. They’ve torn up almost all the fences and the rails and posts are scattered in the space between them and the house. One rail made it as far as the garden and it’s sticking up like a wrenched tooth from the ground.

The revenants don’t have the best aim, judging from the scatter. Then again, they don’t seem to have eyes, and Derek wastes a second wondering how they tell which way to fling something. Then he gives himself a shake and twists around, crossbow first, to look towards the barn-end of the house. 

He doesn’t see any revenants in that direction, but the building is so long that it gets in the way and creates a sizable blind spot right up against the wall where something could be hiding and Derek wouldn’t be able to see. And while he doesn’t _hear_ anything, the revenants do seem to be able to appear and disappear without making a sound, and…he should ask Peter or Stiles how they do that.

When he gets back down, and he’s not done yet, he reluctantly reminds himself. A revenant moans and Derek flinches down, then creeps back up as it just works sideways across the clearing. He bites his lip, grips the crossbow more firmly, and then sees about crawling further out onto the roof where he can get a better look of that far end.

Stiles obviously does this regularly, because Derek can feel raised bits of wood nailed to the roof for hand- and footholds. They run from the trapdoor, which Derek props open with a bolt, across the top of the roof nearly to the end of the building. Derek doesn’t go that far, but he creeps over till the blind spot’s too small to hold a revenant.

Then he backtracks, but just as he’s gotten his hand to the trapdoor, one of the revenants bends over and picks up a rail. It staggers awkwardly, not so much from the rail’s weight as from its length, and then swings that up and back. Derek ducks, makes a face at himself for it, and jerks up the crossbow instead.

His first shot misses and hits the rail instead of the revenant. The bolt’s impact does throw off the rail’s path enough that it flips up in the air, but that means the revenant just picks it up again for another try at throwing. Hissing under his breath, Derek grabs another bolt, loads it, and—hits the revenant’s arm. Shoulder.

He reloads and refires frantically, worried that the revenant will do its disappearing act before he can get it, and on the fourth bolt, he hits its head. From here he can’t see if that black fluid is coming out of it, but the rail drops and the head suddenly folds in on itself, and then the whole body collapses.

Derek reloads and watches with his breath held, but none of the other revenants seem to pay any attention to it. They keep on doing whatever they’d been doing, ignoring both the fallen revenant and the dropped rail. And they’re not making any move to copy and grab more things to throw, so he decides it’s better to go back down and ask what it all means.

“He’s still sleeping,” Peter says, cocking his head at Derek’s report. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“Well, but you read that book, does it say anything?” Derek asks.

“Not that I remember, but I can look again…sit down, would you, you’re going to wake him, panting like that,” Peter says. He’s tense but is making an obvious effort to be the calm one, even to the point of patting Derek’s shoulder as he gets up; he’d been going through his diaries, and the book about the revenant’s on the other side of the bed.

When he rises, so does the ram. Peter takes a step off the bed and the ram follows him, and then Peter turns and throws up his hands in exasperation.

“Now what?” he says. “Haven’t we shown enough good faith? Am I not, in fact, in the _middle_ of helping to lighten the load on his—”

The ram pulls its head back slightly, blinking in a confused way, and then it walks around Peter. It goes over to Stiles’ endless chests of books and drops its head in, then pulls out a new book and carries it over to Peter. Who opens and closes his mouth a few times, then takes the book and flips it around to read the spine.

“‘Volume two,’” Peter says. “Oh.”

Derek presses his lips together as tightly as he can and slides onto the furs, and ignores all eye-contact with Peter, even when Peter makes that little miffed noise. He doesn’t laugh. Barely. 

That gets a lot easier when something thumps in or near the other end of the house, followed by a harsh, ringing clang. A couple sheep stumble into the living quarters, looking dazed, and the ram rushes by them into the barn half. Its hooves clatter furiously, abruptly stop, and then come back at a brisk but not frantic pace, so Derek guesses nothing was actually breached.

“Something hit a shutter,” Peter guesses. He puts down the book and picks up the crossbow and a few bolts, then starts towards the doorway. “I’ll go see how bad it is.”

“If it’s bent and there’s a gap, there’s that board over there,” Derek says, hooking his chin at a piece of wood hanging on the wall.

Peter goes over and takes it down. He smacks the board lightly against his knee, then nods approvingly at its soundness. Then he and the ram go off to have a look.

Derek tries to settle himself on the furs and just wait for them. He reaches for the book in case this one isn’t so heavy on the math, but it’s just a little too far away for him to get without getting up. And also his arm knocks into the stack of Peter’s diaries on the way to it, dislodging one volume and sending it sliding to land right in front of him.

He looks at it. Sniffs it. Then looks at it.

“I’m not sure if that’s a special kind of werewolf reading technique,” Stiles says. Awake. Awake and his heartbeat makes that ragingly obvious, but he still manages to startle Derek. He smartly just lies there, not even moving to get his widened eyes all the way clear of the furs, till Derek finishes hissing and twitching—and then his head pops up. “The smelling? Can you read by smell? Like there are these people who sleep on books and can read them without opening them that way—”

“No,” Derek mutters, jerking away from the man. “Besides, that’s cheating.”

Stiles blinks. “Okay…interesting worldview there. Anyway, look, you totally want to read them, don’t you?”

“And yeah, yeah, you already have, and Peter and I are not going to get you for what you did to us so can you just shut up?” Derek snaps.

“I could. Obviously, but then you’d never find out that I actually wasn’t going to go in that direction, and that would be very unfortunate for clearing up the record,” Stiles says. He does seem like he’s not really trying to tease Derek, what with the apologetic tone and flat scent. He just can’t help talking like that. “Or that I’ve actually only read one of his diaries. Look, _I_ don’t read by sleeping on books, even if I got to sleep enough to try it, and it’s not like I had that long with them before you two showed up.”

“Well, we were trying to give you a chance to nap,” Derek says. In the other half of the building, he hears a stifled chuckle from Peter and realizes the other man’s following along with the conversation. “I guess unless you want us to knock you out, that isn’t going to work either.”

Stiles laughs nervously, then reaches out and pushes Derek in that fake way people use when they’re not really sure it’s a joke. “Ahahaha, yes, concussions sound like a great way for me to relax from my eternal quest to raise sheep and wrest this mountain from the cold, literally dead hands of the revenants.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Derek shrugs. He looks around for something to change the subject and then remembers. “When you said they’re getting worse, what does that mean? Did you mean how they’re throwing stuff?”

“No, they always did that. Made me glad to find this place, let me tell you,” Stiles says. He tilts his head back and glances over the twig bundles, then makes a face and turns over and flops down onto his back. “They did actually send out somebody to try and wipe them out, way back in the day, right after their original maker was wiped out. This is what’s left of the guardhouse they put up. Solid building, huh.”

Derek can’t really do anything else but nod. Then he starts to reach for the book again, since Stiles sounds like he’s going to be just as long-winded as Peter, but Stiles suddenly looks over at him.

“But they are getting bigger,” Stiles says, expression sober. “When I first came here—scratch that, when the first reports got to my dad, we heard they were as big as a man. Then I got out here, and they were…like really, really tall men, but I figured it was a rare case of underreporting. And now they’re ranging up into small giant height, and…I’m not sure but I think it might be because some of them used to be werewolves. And fear might feed them too. Nobody comes this far anymore.”

“Why haven’t you just left?” Peter asks. He pauses in the doorway as they look up, then comes across the room. He still has the board under one arm and when Stiles looks at it, Peter shrugs and takes the board in one hand and turns towards the fire. “One shutter is dented but the hinges and bar are still sound, and I was able to bend it mostly back into place, so—”

“So don’t burn my _cutting board_ ,” Stiles yelps, lunging up to grab it. Then he falls back onto the bedding, clutching the board to his chest, as a bemused Peter pulls off the loaded bolt and then sets it and the crossbow down.

The ram’s not with Peter, and when Derek makes an inquiring rumble in his throat and gets Peter’s attention, Peter gestures that it’s still back in the barn, keeping an eye on the window. Then Peter takes a seat next to Derek and across from Stiles, who’s slowly relaxing his grip on the board.

Stiles sits up and looks at them, then down at the board. He flips it a few times between his hands, trying to make up his mind about something. At first Peter waits, but as the silence starts to drag into the minutes, he gets impatient and looks over Derek instead. “Is your leg back to normal?” he says.

“Pretty close, I think,” Derek says, lifting it and flexing it. His reflexes in his toes and ankles are still a little sluggish, but if he shifts, it probably won’t be that noticeable. 

He looks at Peter’s leg, then reaches over to feel across the skin. He can’t see marks on it anymore, but if he presses hard enough, he can still get thin ridges of scar tissue. From the way Peter snorts and bats him off, they’re not enough to be worth any fuss, and the mark on Peter’s side is finally gone, too.

“Okay, come _on_ ,” Stiles says in an aggravated, tired tone.

“What? I’m concerned about my nephew’s well-being, and he’s simply returning the favor,” Peter says, brows arched. “Sometimes it’s _not_ a ploy, Stiles. It’s just plain human compassion.”

“You weren’t actually scarred that high,” Stiles says, brows raised right back. He meets Peter’s gaze, then flicks his hand at where Derek’s hand has maybe slipped higher up on Peter’s thigh than necessary because he was busy listening to them.

Peter does that thing where comprehension dawns but instead of being embarrassed like a normal person, he decides to lean into the insanity and be so outrageous that the other person is forced to be embarrassed for the both of them. “Well, we’re all men here, let’s not pretend that we wouldn’t also check for full function there the first chance we got.”

Stiles makes an incredulous noise and looks at Derek. Who’s…not really the kind of person who likes this kind of teasing, even if he’s decided Stiles might be interesting to get to know, but who’s also frustrated with how long it takes to get Stiles to tell them anything useful. So he doesn’t move his hand, but he…doesn’t move his hand.

“Are you actually being mean to me?” Stiles says after a second. He does some odd motions with his hands, then throws them up and just rolls onto his back again. The cutting board goes flying into the wall, startling the sheep, but Stiles doesn’t seem to notice. “I mean, I’m getting some weird vibes, is all I’m saying. And yeah, Peter, okay, I admit my werewolf knowledge is obviously lacking in areas, so right now I’m not sure if I’m being rude or you are or are we flirting or are you setting me up for a sadistic kiss-off in the morning when you go?” 

“That’s…a lot of questions,” Derek says. He tries to count, then looks at Peter. “Were the last two the same thing?”

Peter actually doesn’t look that much more clear on it, and he smells like that wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting. “Stiles,” he eventually tries. “We’re just—”

“I don’t go because I _can’t_ , okay?” Stiles snaps. If anything, _he’s_ the one giving off bizarre signals, what with going from being amused to plaintive to angry with a side of sour desperation. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re on a mountain without a good road and really bad terrain. I can’t move that fast, there’s no good shelter between here and the nearest village, and there’s my stuff and the sheep to think about. And before you say—listen, I worked _hard_ for my books and they’re going to be what takes care of my dad when I do get out of this, and the sheep are my friends and I’m not leaving them to be mushed up and don’t even try to make that weird.”

“Oh, well…I see,” Peter says, blinking rapidly.

“Look, I’m not whining. I know I put myself here, it’s not like I had no idea about what I was getting myself into,” Stiles says, his tone suddenly losing its bite. He stares morosely at the ceiling, one arm flopped partly across the top of his head. “I knew and I came here anyway, and set this all up, every step of the way. So I know exactly where I’ve landed, thanks.”

Then he’s silent. A couple sheep drift around the edge of the bedding, obviously worried, and then one goes into the barn. Derek’s hoping it’s getting the ram, and the ram does show up a couple minutes later, but when it crosses the room and bleats softly, Stiles just makes an irritable noise and then pulls his arm down to cover his eyes. The ram scuffs its hooves but doesn’t seem to know what to do.

“How long till daylight?” Peter asks quietly.

Derek looks sharply at him. Peter rolls his shoulders back and lifts his chin, silently telling Derek to back off or challenge. But then, before Derek can even start to react, Peter softens his stance. Drops his shoulders and lowers his head, and then slides down to lie on his belly, propped up on his elbows. He flicks his eyes at Stiles, then looks back at Derek.

He’s asking Derek. Of course, he still doesn’t tell Derek just what they’re about to do, but he’s asking and…and maybe Derek’s just too stunned by that. Anyway, Derek lowers himself onto his belly, too. He lifts one arm to swing himself around so he’s next to Peter but Peter shakes his head. Then Peter curls around and grabs one of his diaries. He gives Derek a little bit of a sideways look, his chin rising again, but when he flips it open, it’s at an angle where Derek would have to move to _not_ see the pages.

“Three, four hours, maybe,” Stiles says, peeking at the swaying twig bundle. Then he heaves a sigh. “Not much longer to put up with me.”

“Enough for a decent nap while Derek and I think about how best to pack things up,” Peter says, looking right at Derek.

Stiles goes very still and holds his breath. Then he takes his arm off his face. “Excuse me?”

“They can carry bags, right?” Derek says, catching on. The little sag of relief Peter has just then is almost better than getting to see his diary. And then Peter smiles at him and it’s not even smug, it’s just pleased with Derek, and Derek thinks he’d like to see _that_ more, if Peter really does like him. “The sheep. Because we could carry some, but then we can’t deal with any revenants.”

“If there are three of us, I think that’s just sufficient to keep them at bay. It’ll be just after the new moon so they can’t move in the day anymore, and we can keep the sheep in order so we’ll only have to spend one night, at most, out in the open,” Peter adds, still smiling. Then he rolls his eyes and reaches out, because Stiles is trying to get up.

Derek’s already got it, and pushes Stiles back down into the furs. The ram gets a little nervous, waving its horns at him, but he pulls his hand back as soon as he can and Stiles sputters loudly enough that it’s clear he’s not hurt. “Wait, what? You’re—really?” he says, staring at them with wide eyes.

“Why not? If nothing else, I think it’d be a terrible idea to see what happens if they convert somebody who actually knows a thing or two about the dark arts,” Peter says, with a casual shrug. “If just werewolves make them grow to monstrous sizes, then you might make them intelligent and who knows what would be left of the rest of us.” 

Stiles rolls onto one arm and turns and stares at them. He does that for so long that Derek has to curl his fingers to keep from reaching out and poking him. Then he flops back down, and at the same time lets out a laugh. It’s kind of shaky, but mostly, it’s happy, and Derek catches himself thinking he wouldn’t mind seeing that again.

“Wow. Okay. Okay, yeah, that would—that would work. The whole thing is the sheep need to rest, they can’t pull all-nighters like me, and it takes so long to dig a salt line, it’s not like I can make that portable, and…and yeah. Cool,” he says. He rubs a trembling hand over his face, then rolls over to look at them again. “Thank you so—”

“Oh, you’re going to owe us,” Peter says, very nicely.

“And no dog jokes, just because we’re herding them,” Derek says.

Stiles and Peter look over at him. “You know, I actually hadn’t made that connection before you said that, but…nope, got it, none shall pass these lips,” Stiles says, wiping his finger across his mouth. He starts to lie down again, then bounces back up and crawls to the edge of the bed to wave over the ram. “You heard that, right? You’re gonna be okay with Derek and Peter, right, because _none_ of us are getting eaten.”

Derek opens his mouth and Peter elbows him. “I think it’s too late to ask for that one, too,” Peter mutters.

“Fine,” Derek says. He resettles himself on his arms and looks down. Then he frowns. “Is that supposed to be Deucalion? And is that a…a watermelon?”

“If you’re going to be an art critic, I might rethink my newfound openness,” Peter says.

“No, not that, it’s just…what’s he _doing_ to himself?” Derek says.

“Hmm, oh, is he showing you the cartoons?” Stiles says. He gives the ram one last cuddle, then crawls back over to them. “They’re fun, aren’t they? And super-educational, I’ve learned so much about pack hierarchy and culture and—”

“Go to sleep,” Derek and Peter say at the same time. 

“You need rest so you’ll be up for the walk,” Peter adds.

Stiles makes a face at them, but then the ram climbs onto the furs and distracts him. It plops down by Stiles and puts its head on his back—and puts some real effort into keeping it there when Stiles tries to squirm around and bat at it. Peter glances at Derek, brow arched, and Derek snorts and scoots back so that he’s lying more by Stiles. That’s so he can hook his foot over Stiles’ leg and keep the man down, but then he gets a whiff of interest in Peter’s scent, and looks up to find Peter with a disbelieving but very pleased expression.

“Oh, sure, cuddle me into submission,” Stiles grumbles, as Peter moves over so Derek can still see the diary. Which curls him up right in front of Stiles, his chest right in Stiles’ line of sight, and Stiles’ eyes widen slightly, while the man’s scent gets thick with as much embarrassment as enjoyment. “And it’s actually working. Not fair.”

“ _Baa_ ,” the ram says pointedly.

“Like to see _you_ sleep like this,” Stiles says, but he puts his head down. Angled so he can try and see the pages too, but despite his best efforts, his eyes soon flutter shut and his breathing slows.

The revenants have quieted down, Derek suddenly realizes. He straightens up to listen, remembering what Stiles had said about them coming in waves. But maybe they’re already losing power; the new moon’s almost over, after all.

“We’ll get off this mountain,” Peter says quietly. When Derek looks back, the other man’s got as serious an expression as Derek’s ever seen on him. All the amusement and even the lust is gone, and in their place is just…plain determination. “We’ll get off, and then we’ll see about this new devious streak of yours—” well, there’s a familiar, if small, hint of sarcasm, and that actually makes Derek relax “—and also about what else Stiles has been studying up here, since druids aside, it’s always good to know your mages. I promise.”

“I believe you,” Derek says. He pauses, then looks down. “I never thought you’d actually leave me behind. Not really.”

Peter makes a low, soft sound in his throat, close to that one rumble only parents make to their children. But before Derek can get offended, Peter leans over and rubs his cheek against Derek’s shoulder. Then again, and he’s crooking his neck in Derek’s face like…Derek hesitates, then lips at Peter’s throat. He’s not sure if biting would push it too far, considering they haven’t actually done much, but…Peter seems fine with it. The other man leans back, looking satisfied, and then turns to the book.

“It’s not a watermelon,” he says after a second. “It’s supposed to be a suppository. The other page is the recipe. It’s a cure for chronic constipation.”

Derek tilts his head. “Oh. Well, makes sense…but I think I liked the watermelon idea better.”

Peter looks at the drawing. “So do I, actually. Hmm…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Horns and hooves aren't affected because they're made mostly of layers of dead cells/proteins. So no life-force to drain (though they both have living cores, so theoretically, if one snapped off far enough back, the sheep would be in trouble).
> 
> Crossbows are actually not that easy to aim, on top of being less accurate over distance than other types of bows, but they're much faster to learn to use.
> 
> The most famous person to have ever claimed the ability to just sleep on a book and thereby learn its contents without actually opening it was probably Edgar Cayce.


	9. Chapter 9

The revenants lob the odd chunk of wood, but as light creeps over the sky, their moaning grows softer and softer, and their steps start to fall away from the farmhouse. About a half-hour before sunrise, they die out completely.

In Derek’s opinion, it seems suspicious, but Stiles doesn’t think too much of it when he wakes up. He just surveys the twig bundles, announces they’re clear, and then throws himself into the idea of packing up and moving down the mountain. Which would take care of Derek’s concern, if they can do it fast enough, so Derek holds back on his protests.

Packing up takes most of the morning, which makes it nerve-wracking enough. It’s not that Stiles is being difficult about it—he’s actually a lot better than Derek would be about just choosing absolute essentials to take—but it takes a while for them to figure out how to rig bags that won’t fall off the sheep. The thing is, the sheep are very patient and surprisingly sturdy for their size, but…they’re small. And a lot more of them is wool than you’d think.

Also, Stiles does insist on nailing shut all the doors and windows and doing some magic stuff with salt and chalk and a smoking bundle of dried herbs before they go. “I still don’t think the revenants would be able to get in and mess around, even by accident, but just in case anybody else comes by before we can come back,” he says. “Even without any books, if they know just a little bit of magic, they could do some seriously terrible stuff with what I’m leaving behind.”

“Why don’t you get the flock started?” Peter says to Derek, almost at the same time. “I’ll stay with Stiles and then we’ll catch up with you. That way we won’t lose any more time.”

Derek opens his mouth but Peter gives him that one look, meaning if Derek doesn’t, Peter’s going to do it himself and anything bad that happens as a result will be all Derek’s fault. So Derek closes his mouth, sighs, and waves for the ram to get a move on.

The ram’s in the lead, while Derek brings up the back. He’s got his hands full for the first couple hundred yards, since the ground’s all torn up from the revenants and he has to keep helping the sheep over rolled-up turf and saving them from potholes. After that, things smooth out and they start moving a little bit faster.

Still too slow—and _Derek’s_ the one slowing them, which irritates him to no end. But the woods are very thick and he has to keep ducking branches that the sheep, being midgets, don’t have to worry about. He puts up for it for a few minutes and then gets so irritated he just shifts to a wolf.

The nearest sheep’s eyes widen and it whirls around, plants its hooves and baas in surprise. Derek freezes and the rest of the sheep look back, then zig about to match the first sheep, with the ram heading up the wary-looking vee. They’re really nimble, Derek notices while wincing.

He starts to shift back, but then…thinks about it, because they’re staring at him but they’re not fleeing in terror or trying to headbutt him, so he’s got a second. And then he stays as a wolf, and just sits down and looks at them, and after a second the ram tips its head and bleats curiously. Derek can’t shrug as a wolf, but he raises a hindleg and scratches his side—then behind his ear because it actually does itch, okay?—and then puts his paw down and raises his ears in a question back at the ram.

The ram chews meditatively, then takes a step forward. It leans towards Derek and he’s not sure what it’s doing, but the polite thing for a wolf to do would be to sniff noses, so he does that. The ram sneezes and backs off, blinking. It considers him again, and then turns around and silently shoulders back through the flock. The rest of the sheep slowly wheel around to follow it, and as they trot off, Derek gets up and starts walking too, figuring they’ve settled all of that.

Stiles and Peter find them just a few minutes later. Peter’s carrying bags, so he can’t shift, but he smirks a lot, and then tries to skritch Derek behind the ears when Derek growls at him. Derek thumps the man with his tail and then switches to the other side of the flock.

They have to stop to water the sheep every hour or so, so when they’ve stopped at a stream for that, Derek shifts human and then asks. “You’re coming back?”

“Well, yeah, we can’t just leave revenants running around,” Stiles says, looking like it’s the last thing he wants to do. “They’re never going to die otherwise, and if somebody doesn’t keep their numbers down, they’re going to move down into the valleys.”

“But it can’t just be you. No offense, but you’re clearly not enough,” Peter says.

“Hey, hey, not arguing. Best thing would be to get a team to just sweep the mountain and build out a proper guardhouse, but like I told you, the idiots in the capital don’t want to believe it,” Stiles says, slicing up some bread with a knife. He gives each of them a piece, and then goes to check the salt pork he’s got soaking in the stream. “Even the garrison at the main pass wouldn’t do anything, and they’ve got witnesses in the actual _guard_ , but when my dad showed up they told him to shut up and demoted him to deputy steward of the kitchens.”

“Is your dad still there?” Derek asks. The bread’s kind of stale, but Stiles comes back with the desalted pork and a bottle of leftover gravy, which greatly improves things. “Is that where you want to go next?”

Stiles laughs awkwardly and sits back down with them. He starts to talk about how he’s not really kitchen material, since that’s not about cooking so much as super-regimented gung-ho something, and then he suddenly cuts himself off. “Um,” he says. He eats some bread, then sighs. “Well. Look. I should do that, but I…didn’t really tell him before I left, because—”

“Surprising him with success is the best way to gloss over the messy bits of revenge?” Peter suggests.

“Ah. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much,” Stiles mutters. He’d briefly lightened up at Peter’s remark, but he’s slumped down again. “And if I go back and tell him that not only do I not have a way to get back at those assholes, but things are actually _worse_ and…anyway, he’d just fret even more about not being able to do anything to help. I can do more if I’m out here where the official types don’t know what I’m doing.”

“We’re gonna have to tell Mom about all of this,” Derek says. All he’s trying to do is change the subject so Stiles won’t look so uncomfortable, but from the way Peter suddenly straightens up, he’s pretty sure he actually did something else.

“Oh, is your pack going to be mad?” Stiles says, blinking. “I mean, I thought omegas were sort of social outcasts anyway, so that’s why nobody was coming to see why they were going missing. And anyway, that’s not your fault, I can’t see how anybody could say how it was.”

Peter is trying not to smile, and he’s losing that fight and he smells so gleeful about it that Derek instinctively checks to see which way to run in case something happens. “No, no, no, Derek didn’t mean that. He meant my sis—our alpha, she’ll see that this isn’t just a threat to omegas. If the revenants expand into pack territory, that’s a danger to us all, and she’ll be very interested in fighting it. She’s going to want details, in fact. Plenty of them. And I think she’ll be very happy to have an expert to talk to.”

He looks at Derek. Then frowns a little and gives Derek a surreptitious kick; Derek does see where this is going, but he’s just a bit stunned that he actually _likes_ Peter’s idea, for once. “Oh. Yeah. She’ll like you, you should come visit.”

Which maybe was not as subtle as Peter wanted, considering how Peter nearly drops his face into his hand. On the other hand, Stiles doesn’t look like he’s weirded out. If anything, he looks excited. “Really? She’d listen if I explained exponential growth curves and doomsday scenarios? And she wouldn’t mind if I suggested violent extermination?”

“Werewolves,” Peter says dismissively. “And there’s still plenty of game where we live, so she won’t mind putting your sheep off-limits either.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s kind of a deal-breaker,” Stiles says, glancing at the worried sheep on either side of him. He reaches out and ruffles the wool on one, then suddenly stuffs all his food into his mouth and bounces up. “So awesome, a revenant-kill team and _nobody_ gets eaten, not just me. Great! So let’s get going again, sooner we’re off the mountain, sooner I can brush up on my diplomatic skills.”

* * *

They don’t make it to the first village before night falls. Actually, they have to stop a good hour and a half before sunset, since having the flock along means it takes much longer to find even a half-decent shelter for the night. There aren’t any handy salted-rock outcrops, so they end up having to settle for a non-salty boulder pile. One of them can climb it and keep watch while the rest of them tuck in around the base as tightly as they can, keep bags of salt handy, and try to sleep light.

“C’mon, got to rest up for that last push,” Stiles mutters as he works his way around the flock, doing his best to reassure the nervous sheep. “Just a short little walk in the morning. We’re so close, guys.”

“Baaa!” the ram says encouragingly, following behind Stiles, but the other sheep look less convinced.

Derek has to admit he feels more like them than he does Stiles or Peter, who drew for first shift and who’s humming as he carefully arranges crossbow bolts beside him on the top of the boulders. Then again, when a branch snaps in the woods, Peter’s humming cuts off like it’s been sheared with a razor and Derek can hear the small, high screech his claws make as they grate against the rock. So maybe Peter’s not as calm as his heartbeat was making out.

“Okay…club, cure, blanket…you look like you’re good for the night,” Stiles says, looking over the salt-cured stick, bag of herbal stuff, and lumpy knit he’d given Derek. He starts to turn, then stops. “Um…I’ve been kind of wondering, do you find it offensive if…”

Derek eyes the man’s fidgeting fingers, then sighs and twists over so his head pushes across the ground and nearly touches Stiles’ foot. Stiles’ eyes go wide and he starts to swoop down. Then stops himself, bundles up the hem of his cloak, and bends down with a little less enthusiasm. Though all that restraint goes away the moment his fingers touch the top of Derek’s head.

“Hey, you’re kind of fuzzy,” he says, an incredulous, gleeful look growing over his face.

He is _so_ weird, but…it does feel good. So good, in fact, that it takes Derek a few seconds to notice that Stiles’ hand is slipping down past his ears and almost onto his neck—he jerks his head up and Stiles promptly hops back, spreading his empty hands and muttering apologies. Then Stiles scuffles off and starts hiking up the boulder pile to join Peter.

Even from here, in the dark, Derek can tell that Peter is smirking at them. He bares his teeth in a silent snarl at Peter, then huffs and twists around, putting his back against the nearest sheep so he can easily confront anything coming out of the woods.

Sleep’s slow to come, and even when it does, it’s not very deep or restful. It’s a little annoying, since the sheep throw off a lot of heat, and one of them even snuggles up close enough for Derek to use it as a pillow and it’s all soft and fluffy under his chin. But none of that matters: he keeps waking up, stiff and alert, waiting for something to happen.

“…ask about that?” Stiles is whispering to Peter. “I mean, I don’t know werewolves, but it sounds like you weren’t gone that long.”

“No, we’ll be fine. It’ll—oh. I should probably say at this point that we weren’t exactly looking for new territory,” Peter says, sounding a little embarrassed. “Young werewolves _do_ leave for that reason, but we were more…just trying to broaden our horizons. Derek in particular hasn’t been outside the pack much. But we were always planning to go back, and this trip was just that: a trip.”

“No kidding,” Stiles says. He pauses, then lets out a weak laugh. “Well, got what you asked for, didn’t you?”

Peter takes a while to answer, and when he does, he sounds surprisingly meditative. “Yes I think so. Not just for him but for me, too…it’s funny how a change of setting makes familiar things look different. I’ve always thought that if you’re smart and you go through the trouble to educate yourself, that shouldn’t matter, but some things you really can’t learn from books. And people change quite a bit when you take them away from home.”

“…he is really hot, if I’m reading that stare of yours right,” Stiles says, and there’s something brutal about how casually honest he is with his wistfulness. “I mean, you are too, trust me, I’m digging the different shades of werewolf attractiveness here. I kind of can’t believe they’d let you two leave just for how much that must reduce the eye-candy levels when you do that whole public snuggling…and I’m just going to shut up now before my hole caves in on top of me.”

Peter chuckles, but that dies off fairly quickly. “Well, that might be a bigger surprise to them than you,” he mutters. “Should keep that in mind, actually.”

“Hmm?” Stiles says. “Hey, if you’re yawning, why don’t you go down and catch a few winks? I can hold it down up here.”

There’s some flirting after that, but Peter sounds genuinely tired, and a few minutes later he’s slipped down and has picked his way through the sheep to curl down next to Derek, who moves over to make room. Then, thinking about it, to shift human and go take his turn on the boulders, since Stiles still has had the least sleep of the three of them. But Peter puts a hand on his arm, so he stops.

“I’ll tell your mother,” Peter mumbles. His head is down on his arm and his eyes are closed. “No need to fret yourself into a—”

“I actually wasn’t,” Derek says. He keeps his voice down but can’t help having it come out sharp. Then he shakes off Peter’s hand and pokes the man’s shoulder, as Peter slits his eyes open to look at him. “I mean, if you want to, I guess you can, but…do you think she won’t like it? Why not? Anyway, even so, I can still be the one to tell her.”

Peter’s eyes open all the way. He parts his lips to say something, then doesn’t. He looks like he might be quiet and just stare oddly at Derek, so Derek turns again and then Peter suddenly grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back. Derek’s just biting down on his hiss—some of the sheep are stirring, and Stiles can see him if he’s facing their way—when Peter worms up and presses his face into the crook of Derek’s throat.

The man breathes in deeply, dragging the air along that side of Derek’s chest, and then twists his head a little, laying his chin against Derek. “You’re so strange these days,” he says softly. “I don’t know what scares you anymore.”

Derek doesn’t understand why that would be a problem for Peter—or if it is a problem, with how tightly Peter’s pressed against him. He wants to ask, but somehow he thinks that’d be the wrong thing to do. So he sticks his elbow down so he’ll stop swaying under Peter’s weight and then waits for the man to relax.

“I’m not scared to tell Mom what we’ve been doing,” he says when Peter lifts his head. “Besides, I promised her, after…you know. I wouldn’t lie to her anymore about that sort of thing.”

“I think she’ll be fine,” Peter says after a moment, looking Derek over. His fingers run along the top of Derek’s shoulder and then he lets Derek go. “I was more worried about you, but in that case…”

“If you want to tell Laura and Cora, you could take care of that,” Derek says.

Peter’s eyes narrow, and then he makes a face, but the way he pushes at Derek’s shoulder is amused bordering on flirty, with how his knuckles drag longer than they need to. “Well, I recognize you _now_.”

Derek rolls his eyes, and that’s when one of the sheep bleats in alarm.

He and Peter are immediately up on hands and knees. He’s half-shifted, while Peter’s got his claws out and is grabbing for a club. The sheep’s looking at something that the boulder pile is blocking, and up on top of the boulder, Stiles is aiming the crossbow down at the same side, so Derek finishes his shift, leaps a couple sheep, and then hurries around just in time to see a revenant fall down with a bolt sticking out of its collapsing head.

Derek skids to a stop, dodging the flopping body, only to hear Peter’s angry yell on the other side of the rock pile. Then there are some muffled thuds, followed by a sharper one. “Got it?” Stiles calls.

“I…I think so,” Peter pants.

Stiles pivots on the rock, reloads the crossbow, and raises it. “Move over, I’ll just make sure.”

The crossbow twangs as Derek turns around. He’s ended up standing next to the ram, who’s trying to go up and check out the revenant Stiles killed. Derek isn’t sure why it’d be so curious, but he moves out of its way and that’s when the shadows right in front of him suddenly thicken and rise up into a huge dark figure.

He stumbles backward, snarling, and gets tangled up with a frightened sheep. The revenant sweeps its arms at them and Derek shifts as quickly as he can, going human so he has the arms and hands to just grab the sheep and roll with it out of the way. Up top he can hear Stiles swearing and cranking the crossbow, while Peter’s roaring and running around the side of the boulders.

The sheep and Derek land just short of the dead revenant. So close that Derek panics a little and tosses the sheep off of him, thinking they’d touched it. They haven’t and he’s just gasping in relief when a desperate bleat brings his head whipping up.

It’s got the ram. The revenant and the ram must have gone at each other while Derek was wrestling with the other sheep, and now the ram’s frantically kicking at it as the revenant tries to drag it closer by one horn. Derek shifts to wolf again and drives in with his jaws open, aiming for the revenant’s wrist.

“Don’t bite it! Don’t bite it!” either Stiles or Peter shout. Everything’s happening so fast Derek can’t tell.

Blind attack instinct still has most of a hold on Derek, but he twists his head around. He can’t pull out of the dive, but his jaws rake over something that’s definitely alive, with hot blood that spritzes into his mouth. Then he’s flat on the ground, all the breath driven from him, as the ram writhes on top of him.

The revenant looms over both of them. Its hands are empty so whatever happened, the ram’s free—but as Derek pushes it off, it lands on four feet for only a second before hopping back on three. And there’s blood on that leg and Derek winces and whines, only to nearly get his ruff grabbed by the revenant.

“Get back, I can’t shoot with you—” Stiles yells at them.

Derek jumps back but the revenant jumps at him at the same time. Behind him, he just glimpses wolf-Peter gnashing his jaws uselessly at the revenant’s back, trying to get it to turn—but instead the revenant turns towards the ram, which is desperately trying to limp out of the way. Stiles is still screaming the same thing so it’s not Derek who’s blocking his shot.

The revenant needs to turn and put its head up where Stiles can shoot it. And Derek remembers now why he can’t bite it, but he’s thinking there isn’t any other way and is coiling back to leap when a pale skinny thing catches his eye: the crossbow bolt sticking out of the dead revenant.

Derek goes human and grabs it. The bolt comes out as if the body was made of cream and he flips it around, then stabs it into the revenant’s leg. The revenant rears back, Peter darts in low and seizes the ram with his forepaws and jaws and drags it clear, and then a second crossbow bolt sprouts from the revenant’s head.

It’s barely crashed to the ground when Stiles is off the boulder and feeling over the poor ram, who’s collapsed and is barely breathing. “Oh, no, no, no,” Stiles says, yanking at the wool around the ram’s head and neck. “No, c’mon, no, no way, not this close—you know! You _know_ not to let it touch you!”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I missed,” Derek says, but Stiles ignores him.

“Wait, look,” Peter hisses, grabbing Derek’s shoulder.

Stiles fumbles with something, then holds up one hand, cupping it around what looks like a ball of foxfire. The greenish light flows over the ram’s wide, dilated, unblinking eye, and then across the deep grey splotch on its neck, showing up now as the covering wool slowly grows dry and brittle and then falls off. The revenant must’ve gotten its hand on the ram’s neck in the tussle.

Derek runs around and grabs the waterskin of herbal cure, and runs back to press into Stiles’ hand. Peter helps hold the ram’s body as Stiles hurriedly pours the whole skin down the ram’s throat. The wool stops falling off, but the ram still isn’t waking up. So Derek goes and gets the skin Stiles made up for Peter, and then the one for Stiles, but even after swallowing the contents of both of those, the ram doesn’t look any better.

“I think—” Stiles sounds close to tears “—need more. Need water, need to boil—we gotta get up and get going again.”

“Look,” Peter says again.

“I think we all see,” Derek snaps, and Peter snarls at him and grabs his chin and wrenches his head around and down.

“No, at _that_ ,” Peter says, pointing to where his claw- and bite-marks on the ram’s flanks are healing over.

The bite-marks on the ram’s leg aren’t even there anymore. Derek drops down and pokes at the skin, but it’s completely intact. He and Peter look at each other, and then at Stiles, who _is_ crying now.

“Stiles,” Peter says carefully. “I’m sorry, but—are these actually sheep?”

“What?” Stiles says, looking up in confusion.

The ram twists violently, its hooves flying so close to Stiles’ face that Peter yelps and hauls Stiles out of the way. Then it twists the other way, and then, suddenly, it’s a person.

Stiles stares at them. His mouth opens and closes, and then he raises a shaking hand. “But you’re a _sheep_ ,” he says. “I checked!”

The young man sits up and looks around him with unfocused eyes. He blinks several times and then moves his arms awkwardly. Then he jerks and stares down at them, moving his fingers as if he’s never seen them before. He wiggles each one individually, then presses them together and moves them like a flipper.

“Sc—Scott?” Stiles says.

The man looks up and makes a garbled, throaty noise. He frowns and goes through a series of strange noises, which eventually sort of sound like words. “St—Stiles?”

“You’re…you’re _not_ a sheep?” Stiles says.

Scott shakes his head. Stops and feels at it where the horns would be, looking and smelling distressed. “Sheep…no, ah—am—am sheep, aaaaah—” his throat muscles are convulsing and he sounds exactly like somebody who’s not spoken…well, ever “—whaaaa—”

And then he twists over and turns into the ram again. He stands there, blinking rapidly. Does a quick look-over of himself and then sags in clear relief.

“But we’re not even alphas,” Derek says, looking at Peter.

Peter is staring at the ram. “But he’s a _sheep_.”

“But…okay. Okay. I can—first things first,” Stiles says, getting up. He slaps at his cheek, winces, and then shakes himself and dives again to hug the ram. “Wow, I am _so_ glad you’re not dead and proving people right that you shouldn’t name them even if I tried to forget I even did that and screw it, I’m not really a shepherd anyway. Let’s get out of these woods right now.”

“Baa,” Scott says, nodding vigorously. Halfway through, his scent changes. His eyes widen and his legs look strange, a little too long, but then he plants his hooves and squeezes his eyes shut and they go back to normal.

“And then we’re gonna—we’ll—um—whatever, let’s _go_ ,” Stiles says.

Well, nothing about that Derek and Peter can object to. They turn around and start hustling to get the bags strapped onto the other sheep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think of revenants as viral (like zombies who reproduce via bite), then the exponential growth model is entirely appropriate.
> 
> Peter bites the ram to drag it free because the fight is happening so quickly he doesn't have time to shift and grab with his hands.
> 
> The more I think about it, the more Scott the Heroic Sheeple, striving for peace and nonviolence in a world full of wolves, makes sense of all the traits that normally irritate me about him, compared to Scott the Plot-Enabled Atypical Talismanic True Alpha Werewolf.
> 
> ...yeah. I made Scott a sheep. Makes the whole story suddenly read differently, doesn't it?


	10. Chapter 10

When they stagger into the nearest village, it’s nearly dawn and they are too exhausted to find _anything_ weird, and when the tavernkeeper—since the place is too small to have an actual inn—objects to opening up so early and asks why Derek and Peter are naked, Stiles beans him with a bag of coins and they all walk past his unconscious body to make themselves at home.

Luckily, the place is between visitors so they pretty much have it to themselves. Which includes having to cook and get wash-water and muck out the stables, since once the tavernkeeper wakes up, he takes the money and yells at them that he’s giving them one day before he comes back. Peter doesn’t say a thing about service you supposedly pay for, just heats up a giant cauldron of water and finds the most expensive-looking soap in the place and then scrubs himself and Derek down.

They heat up more water for Stiles, but he’s out in the barn, settling down the sheep and trying to figure out what happened to the ram. “Scott,” he says, when he finally comes in as they’re finishing up breakfast. “Scott, he can talk now and he says he’s okay with the name and all, so…”

“So he was a sheep,” Derek says.

Stiles has an odd, almost embarrassed expression on his face. “Yeah, he was. He very clearly remembers being a lamb.”

“He’s got quite the memory,” Peter says after a second. “As well as intelligence. They did seem very bright before, but—”

“So that’s the thing. I…may have accidentally made them that way?” Stiles says. He keeps rubbing at the side of his face and yawning, and it’s not doing a thing to stop the blush rising in his face. “I mean, I was doing all this weird magic, right, and it was a small building and we were all bored and they liked to watch and it’s not like they ever _looked_ like it was affecting them, but apparently, it did. And I guess your bites were what tipped it over, but anyway, Scott’s a were-she—no, that’s wrong, he’s not a person who goes sheep. He’s a sheep who goes human, so he’s a, um, I don’t know what that is. But the good thing is, he doesn’t mind.”

“What about the rest of the sheep?” Derek asks.

Stiles laughs weakly. “Yeah, so…Scott can still talk to them, and he says they’re all cool with the changes too, they like being smarter, and some of them are even curious about whether if they get bitten, they can shift human too and…um, I think I’m still in shock here. I mean, I didn’t even notice!”

“But…they’re weird,” Derek says. Peter kicks him under the table and Derek winces and grabs at his shin and nearly puts his head in his bowl, but Stiles stares at him as if none of that had happened and the important part is why is Derek saying that. “They’re not normal. They get you things and help out around the kitchen and they understand when we talk to them. Didn’t you notice that?”

“Well, but you can train dogs to do that stuff too,” Stiles says. He’s genuinely confused.

“But they’re _sheep_ ,” Peter sputters, having decided to stop kicking Derek and join him in disbelief. “Stiles, sheep aren’t like that. Regular sheep, anyway.”

“Okay, well, I wouldn’t know, these are the first sheep I’ve ever had. I grew up in a city! All the sheep before this came in neatly-portioned joints!” Stiles says, throwing up his hands. He holds that pose for a second, then drops his arms and groans. “I am so, so glad Scott is okay, but can I just be weird for a second and say, I don’t think I can ever eat sheep again, and I _loved_ that one sausage stand? Man, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Strangely enough, Derek might just have to agree with him on the eating sheep thing. He’s never really liked mutton or lamb that much, so it won’t be much of a hardship, but this is just not what Derek would’ve thought would put him off a food. But when he thinks about lamb chops and shanks now, he just keeps seeing Stiles crying and pulling at wool that keeps falling to powder under his fingers.

Anyway. Now that they’re not worried about dying, it’s all very…Derek isn’t sure exactly what it is, or how he should feel about it. Stiles is right about that, too. 

“I think you should eat. And wash up,” Peter says after a few seconds. He gets up and goes over to Stiles and gives the man a little shake of the shoulder, and when Stiles starts up, blinking hard, he points out the hot water and soap and the clothes they swiped from the tavern closets. “We should be clear now, right? So there’s plenty of time to sit and think it over.”

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, if that guy’s annoyed we woke him up early, he’s clearly not worried about revenants invading every night,” Stiles says. He takes a step towards the soap, then raises his arm and yawns into it. “Though I think I’m going to stay in the barn just in case we have to get the sheep out—man. I’m not even sure I should be calling them sheep anymore.”

“Well, think about it while you’re eating,” Peter says in a soothing tone Derek didn’t even know he could do. He gives Stiles another nudge towards the hot water and then steps back to the table. “Derek and I are taking the back room nearest the door, so if you yell, we’ll be right over.”

“Okay, cool, thanks,” Stiles says. He reaches for the soap and then abruptly twists to look at them. “Really, I mean, thanks. This is all…you guys got me off that mountain. I…I wish I could come up with something that’s worth what that means to me.”

He’s so earnest that Derek shifts back on the bench, so uncomfortable he’s half-thinking about going for the hallway. But Derek expects that; what he doesn’t expect is that Peter looks almost as uncomfortable, and just brushes Stiles off with a quiet ‘you’re welcome’ before saying he and Derek are planning to turn in soon.

“It’s day anyway, might as well take the chance and catch up on your sleep,” Stiles says. “Oh, and I’ll come scrawl some runes around your room so if any anti-werewolf people are around, you won’t need to worry.”

“Oh. Right. Yes,” Peter says. “Thank you, that’s thoughtful.”

“Least I could do,” Stiles shrugs. “Hey, I’ll clean up the dishes too, don’t worry about them.”

When he and Peter get into their room, Derek’s so tired that he groans like an old man, hitting the mattress, but he doesn’t actually think he’s going to sleep any time soon. He’s going to say so but before he can, Peter crawls onto the bed and flops over him. He grunts some at the weight, but then Peter noses into his shoulder, one arm coming up to cuddle alongside Derek’s ribs, and the man’s nice and warm and smells like pack and comfort.

They lie like that for a while. Maybe Derek even dozes, he doesn’t keep track. He just feels like…like he’s been on the alert for so long that his body’s almost forgotten what it’s like to not be like that, and it just takes that long for him to relax because he’s got to do it inch by inch, muscle by muscle.

Peter finally lets out a long, slightly surprised sigh, sounding exactly like that feeling. His legs shift and one of his knees brushes up between Derek’s—they tossed on shirts but were too hungry to bother with trousers—and then he props himself up on one arm as Derek grunts, a little tickled, and instinctively closes his legs around that knee.

“We got off the mountain,” he says. He moves his other arm around so that his fingertips are touching the side of Derek’s face, and then they start stroking down Derek’s jaw and petting at the underside. He starts to smile, incredulous and a little dazed and _happy_ about it, and then he outright laughs as Derek fluffs the bottom of his shirt out of the way and slides both hands under it to grab his waist. “We got off, and I have never been so tired in my life, and you really _do_ have too much energy for your own—”

Derek pulls Peter down and kisses him. Peter’s already got his hands on Derek’s shoulders, kneading them, and then as his tongue slips into Derek’s mouth, startling a moan out of Derek, they work quickly down and back up, stripping Derek of his shirt. Then his palms start smoothing over Derek’s chest, except they’re just a little rough and the roughness catches against Derek’s skin at the most unexpected times, distracting him as he tries to get Peter undressed too, roll the man over, keep up with the kissing.

Peter’s laughing at him, laughing whenever he groans and shivers, and then the man will do something like rub his nails across Derek’s belly, making him jump and nearly sit up so Peter doesn’t even have to tuck his head against Derek’s throat, Derek just does that for him. It’s awful and amazing and Derek’s squirming an erection against Peter’s thigh before he can get them more than onto their sides.

He does get Peter’s shirt off, but that’s just Peter letting him. Smirking before his face disappears behind the shirt and Derek makes a face and then remembers, and as Peter tosses his head and gets the last of the shirt off, Derek ducks down and laps at the man’s nipple. Then again, grabbing onto Peter’s ribs as Peter gasps and bucks. “You—little—conniving—” Peter mutters.

Derek snorts and _sucks_ , and Peter grabs his head and holds him in place till he thinks his lips are starting to chap. And then pushes him over to the other nipple, moaning like—like someone who does nothing but enjoy what’s going on and somehow that goes straight to Derek’s cock, making him rut his hips even though all he’s got to rub against is Peter’s knee.

That’s not even remotely good enough, so he tries to wiggle out of Peter’s grip. He can’t but he gets his head tilted so he can see Peter and the man’s head is thrown back, moving restlessly against the bed, and there’s just the edge of Peter’s lower lip, reddening as he chews on it, and without thinking Derek nibbles too. Not hard, just a graze, but Peter arches sharply enough to jar Derek’s chin with his ribcage.

Derek jerks free of Peter’s hands and holds himself up on his arms, panting, looking at what he did. The nipples are already going back to how they were, since he’s not an alpha—tight and brown, losing that rosy tinge—but they’re shiny with spit and for some reason that puts a hungry rumble in his throat.

Peter looks up at him, slit-eyed, amused but also plotting, and then two hands suddenly race up the insides of Derek’s thighs. They—it’s like—it’s hot and ticklish and _hot_ , sending bolts of heat down into his knees so they shake, and he’s slumping over before Peter even climbs on top of him. The man’s more aggressive, pushing his head back against Derek’s throat but growling while he’s there, growling and then biting till Derek whines and hooks his chin up.

In all honesty, Peter didn’t even need to bite. Derek’s so shaky with sensations going through him now that he couldn’t push Peter off even if he wanted to. He’d thought—before he’d found out about her and had that taint everything—with Kate, he’d thought it’d been good, but he’d always been worried about something or the other and she’d always been rushing him, not letting him really feel things before suddenly it was over, and now he gets that it wasn’t good. She’d just been first, but this is so much _better_ , and maybe that comes out in how he’s looking because Peter makes a low, strangled, almost _angry_ noise and then comes down and kisses Derek like he’s going to press that kiss on every inch of Derek’s insides.

Derek wraps his arms and legs around the other man, because he’s completely fine with that, and Peter starts humping down against him, hard cock slip-sliding between them. Sometimes rubbing along Derek’s own erection and that is _so_ good Derek can feel his eyes rolling back into his head, even with his eyelids firmly shut.

It’s good. It’s really, really good. And—and then—and then Derek is getting close, he thinks. He can feel the muscles in his thighs and groin tightening up, can smell the way their scents are going thick on the tongue, like honey, can feel his head fuzzing up, and yet—the closer he gets, the slower he gets. He’s loosening up his hold on Peter.

Peter notices and pulls back to look at Derek. He looks really good, sweat dragging curls onto his forehead, and Derek can’t help a frustrated noise because Peter looks good and this is good and he just—why they’re stopping—

“Derek, I—” Peter starts, with the beginnings of one of his cocky smiles on his face. Then stops. The smile goes and he stares down at Derek, actually showing his uncertainty. And something softer—he touches the side of Derek’s brow, then grimaces at himself. Bobs down like he might just kiss his way out of it, but then he pulls back and just sucks the breath between his teeth. He’s holding his head a little sideways but his eyes flick back to Derek, just as he speaks again. “Do you—would you—the barn?”

“Yeah,” Derek says immediately. He blinks, thinks about it, and then…nods. “Barn. Yeah.”

Peter smiles at him, broad and brilliant, and relieved and the man just smells so _good_ that Derek rolls them over and buries his face in Peter’s chest, sniffing. A half-startled, half-indignant sound comes out of Peter and then he sighs, and just pets at Derek’s head.

He gives Derek a generous ten seconds, then pushes Derek off, and then they shift to wolves and climb out the window and head over to the barn.

It’s not very big, with just four stalls. The sheep fill up two—Scott’s in ram form, Derek idly notes—and there’s an empty one, and then Stiles is in the last one. Derek and Peter come up through an open window that lets into the hayloft, which spans the whole barn and lets them slink across the intervening stalls till they’re standing right on top of the one Stiles is in.

Stiles is not sleeping. He’s sitting up on a pile of blankets and he’s naked and he has his hand in his lap and is mumbling to himself about do not screw up a good thing, chill out, he can wait for it and he’d _better_ because and then Derek’s paw slips and sends some hay pelting down.

Peter rolls his eyes and then jumps into the stall as Stiles’ head whips up. Derek growls at himself and then follows, and they both shift while Stiles is eeping and throwing around hay. Stiles makes some very weird noises, and every time you think you’ve heard them all, he comes up with another one.

“What the hell, what was that? What, do you really have to give me a heart attack? Is that werewolf for hi?” Stiles gasps, flopping back against the stall wall. He grabs at his chest with one hand and glares at them. Then blinks. Looks again and promptly flushes. “Or…what, this is werewolf for booty call?”

“Yes?” Peter says hopefully.

Derek turns to stare at him, because Peter is supposed to be the _smooth_ one. And no matter how much he complains when they rely on him for it, he’s proud of it.

“Oh,” Stiles says. He flicks some hay off of himself, eyes darting between Derek’s and Peter’s crotches. He starts to ask something, then shakes himself and shoves up on his arm. “Fuck it, I’ll go with that.”

And then he jumps on _Derek_.

Derek flops onto his back and Stiles’ mouth comes down and—and he’s not as methodical as Peter but he does some things that Peter doesn’t, or at least hasn’t gotten around to, and it’s—Derek can go with it. Derek does go with it. He can’t really not, seeing as Stiles’ hand wraps around his cock and gives it two firm pumps before wiggling fingertips in behind the head and Derek didn’t know _that_ move either but he’s going to remember it. If the way he whites out just then leaves him with any brain for it.

When he comes back to himself, Stiles is off him and astride Peter, whose face still looks like Stiles caught him in the middle of being annoyed. And Stiles completely sees that, and is snickering as he works himself down onto Peter’s cock. “Stop it, I like you too,” he says, grunting, rocking his hands against Peter’s shoulders. “Like you so much—caught you out so—ride of your life, trust me—gonna be way better than you on top and you were totally thinking—you’ve got that vibe—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m a very openminded person,” Peter half-scolds, half-moans. He’s trying to lift his hands to reach for Stiles, but every time they come off the blankets, Stiles wiggles his hips and Peter shudders and drops them to buck his hips up into Stiles. “If I like it, then—”

“Sure, and I bet you always think you know ahead of time what you’ll like. Right?” Stiles says, looking over at Derek. He hikes forward a last time, then settles on Peter with a deeply satisfied sigh. Then he swings his arm out and waves Derek over. “C’mon, c’mon, do you wanna screw him stupid or what?”

Derek…kind of does, now that Stiles brings it up. He’s still shaky but manages to slither over, and he’s just asking what to do when Stiles grabs his head and kisses him. He has to grab the man’s shoulders for balance, and then he feels Peter’s hands on his waist and hip, helping. Then kneading, right in time with the hungry noises Peter’s making as Stiles sucks on his tongue and starts moving up and down on Peter’s cock at the same time, and how the man’s doing both at once, Derek…really doesn’t care. His end feels good, and Peter sounds like that end’s doing fine too, and that’s probably all Derek needs to know.

Despite all the hands on him, Derek ends up sagging lower and lower, till he’s nearly lying across Peter’s chest. His hands slide off Stiles’ shoulders; he tries to get them back and ends up pawing clumsily at Stiles’ belly, which makes Stiles laugh and gently push him off, and that ends up twisting him around so he and Peter are mouthing at each other instead. His hands migrate into Peter’s hair and Peter’s got his buttock cupped into a palm and is pressing him against somebody’s leg, humping so his cock starts to harden again.

Stiles’ hand slaps down on Derek’s back, high up between the shoulderblades, and then quivers there as he lets out a long, stuttering groan and Peter suddenly lets go of Derek and goes stiff and still under them. That’s high enough up—it’s close to Derek’s neck, he even thinks one of Stiles’ fingertips is brushing the bump of his spine—it should bother him. He should shake off the man, or at least make him put his hand lower, where it won’t trigger any dominance instincts.

Except it actually doesn’t trigger a reflex. It just feels really, really good. Especially when Stiles hisses and his nails suddenly curve into Derek and dig in and Derek moans into Peter’s mouth before realizing that the man’s gone slack.

Derek pushes himself up and Peter gasps like he’s been underwater for a while. Then stares blankly past Stiles, only his lips moving and they’re just twitching mindlessly, not trying to say anything. If he didn’t smell so absolutely satiated, Derek would be worried.

“Oh, man, that was a nice cock,” Stiles groans. When Derek looks over, Stiles is tugging himself up and off Peter’s. He reaches down to guide the cock out of himself, then gives it a little pat as he lays it back against Peter’s belly; Peter shivers, blinks so his eyes focus on Derek, and then whines right in Derek’s face, still dazed-looking. “And yours looks pretty good too, whenever you’re ready to go again. Is this werewolf standard? The amazing pricks?”

“Again?” Derek says, blinking. Then he notices that Stiles is still hard.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, I know you guys are tired,” Stiles says. He slides off Peter and then sort of spraddle-crawls over to where he’s got a bottle of…cooking oil, from the smell of it. He’s at least moving like he’s sore between his legs, or else Derek would have to wonder about him being human again. “I can take care of it. Been doing that for six straight months, got it down to a science now…and that doesn’t sound so good when I’m not just saying it in my head.”

He grimaces to himself, flushed more with embarrassment than arousal, and Derek sighs and twists around. “Wait,” Derek says. “Come back.”

Stiles looks up and he’s more than happy to do that, says his expression. But also, he’s pondering Derek’s status. He just _never_ stops thinking. “Okay, but I think you need a breather. Trust me, trying to artificially accelerate recovery is something even magic’s really terrible for.”

“Well, is my cock all you want?” Derek says, annoyed.

“On the other hand, good point, and I officially give up on being a good person,” Stiles says, his eyes lighting up. He starts to scramble over, then stops. Grabs the bottle and then comes over, and then eyes Derek in a way that makes him wish maybe he’d made Peter volunteer instead. “So, how do you feel about fingers?”

Peter’s certainly looking interested enough, for all that he can barely roll over to watch. “What have you done, anyway?” he says, looking at Derek.

He isn’t trying to needle Derek. He doesn’t look like it or smell like it, and when Derek flinches, Peter blinks hard and then sucks in his breath and pushes up like he might reach out to Derek, or…or maybe even apologize, with how regretful his expression suddenly is.

“Um,” Stiles says, looking between them. He pauses as they both jump, then offers them a nervous smile. “Things just got weird, didn’t they? I can—”

“No. No, I just—can we not talk about—just what were you thinking, anyway?” Derek mutters. No, he doesn’t want to be reminded of Kate, but damn it, he doesn’t want everything to come back to her either. For the first time since that all happened, he suddenly realizes, he doesn’t feel like his fuck-ups are looming over everything, and he’d really, really like to keep it that way.

Stiles looks at him and it’s curious but also a little sympathetic, and the man doesn’t even know what happened, but he looks like maybe he gets it anyway, and it’s not helping. And Derek’s already rethinking things when Stiles shrugs and holds up both hands, one formed into a circle and the other poking two fingers into the circle. Then Stiles looks at what he’s actually doing with his hands and pulls a sheepish face. “Well, okay, it doesn’t look so good like…but trust me, it’s gonna _feel_ good. I know what I’m doing.”

“Like you knew the side-effects of magic spells on sheep?” Peter says. He’s not nearly as sarcastic as he’d normally be; he still seems relieved to have a change of subject.

Still, him making fun of something…well, it helps Derek forget why he was nervous. And the way he gets annoyed, like everything in the world is supposed to be just like how he assumes it is, when Derek shrugs and spreads his legs, makes it even better. “Okay,” Derek says.

Stiles grins, but he waits another second before shuffling over. Then he stops just short of Derek. He shakes some oil onto his hand, then sticks the bottle in the hay and waves for Derek lean towards him. “So how about we start off light—” he says, just before grabbing Derek’s chin for a good, long kiss.

He’s getting close to Derek’s throat again with his hand, but the kiss is—is—well, Derek’s distracted. They roll over, and then Stiles slithers up over Derek and the man’s cock bumps and sticks against the side of Derek’s thigh, freshening up the smell of come hanging in the stable, and then Stiles sucks on Derek’s tongue like he _knows_ how that’s making Derek’s mouth water.

Not that Derek doesn’t hold up his end, and when they finally break apart, Stiles is making breathless noises and holding onto Derek’s shoulder for support. “Okay,” Derek mutters. “So are we starting or not?”

“Oh, I kind of—” Stiles flashes a grin as toothy as a werewolf’s, while his fingers move and they’re _in_ Derek and circling something that feels like a whole ball of lightning “—anyway, so, you good with that? Too much? Should I slow down?”

Derek would answer, except every time he raises his head and tries to look at the man, he starts to black out. Not that he’s much steadier when he’s lying down flat. He’s trying to breathe but every time Stiles’ fingers wiggle, sharp shocks zip out and starbursts pop behind his eyes and his legs turn to jelly and it feels like he’s trying to find air underwater except that it feels _good_.

Stiles is still asking him something, but Derek can’t answer. He just moans and shoves back down onto the man’s hand, watching the white flashes get closer and closer together. And then there’s an extra weight on top of him, and it should be suffocating but instead it’s actually kind of grounding, helping to pull him down so that he’s riding the top of the shocks instead of burning up in the middle of them. But it keeps moving around so he reaches up and grabs it, or tries to grab it and he can’t really get his arm to get a grip but Peter stops moving anyway and fists both hands in Derek’s hair and they’re kissing again and Stiles is still working those fingers, pushing out all that lightning that Derek didn’t even realize he had inside of himself and Derek just loses track of everything for a second.

Maybe a little longer than a second. Peter was kissing him, but when the world blinks back into view for Derek, the other man’s got his face grinding into Derek’s shoulder, so hard that Derek really doesn’t know how Peter is getting the air for those gasps Derek can hear. And Peter’s hands are planted on either side of Derek’s head, not holding it, and when Derek moves, Peter arches roughly, flashing the soft part of his throat right over Derek’s mouth, eyes squeezed shut, hips twisting in little, uneven, frantic movements against Derek. He’s very hard, his cock wiping precum all over Derek’s belly.

“I think—we—converted him,” Stiles grunts. He’s still down between Derek’s legs and somewhere behind Peter. His head bobs up occasionally over Peter’s shoulder, and then, just as Derek tries to get up and see, _both_ of his hands slap down on Peter’s back. He sees the look on Derek’s face and laughs. “Yeah, hah—you two—pissing contest, huh—one tries it, other’s got to—to—to _top_ and oh, this is _so_ good, you’re so good, so _good_ —”

“Did you—you still haven’t?” Derek blurts out.

Just then Peter’s arms go as straight as possible, ramming him backwards into Stiles, and he goes so stiff that Derek almost thinks he sees stretch marks where Peter’s muscles and tendons are threatening to break through the skin. Peter’s eyes pop wide open and stare blankly at the far wall. Then roll up, surprisingly slowly, and he starts to wilt.

“Oh, shit, no _wait_ ,” Stiles hisses, and Derek can see his hands scrabbling at Peter.

Derek puts his hands up against Peter’s chest. He can only hold up the other man for a couple seconds, because he _still_ feels like he’s turned to rubber, but that’s enough for Stiles to hiss again and then let out a long, deeply satisfied moan.

And then they both squish on top of Derek. 

They’re…really heavy. Peter, Derek knew that, but he’s surprised at how much Stiles adds on. He grunts and twists the little he can, hoping that groaning noise isn’t his ribs caving in—no, it’s Peter. Who snuffles into Derek’s shoulder, making the hay near Derek’s ears crackle as he mindlessly kneads it, and then whines like a pup when Derek finally ends up using his elbow to lever Peter’s head off for a decent gulp of air.

The way Peter turns his head and tries to nuzzle after Derek makes Derek feel guilty, so he stops there. Peter gives Derek’s shoulder and collarbone a couple licks, rumbling happily in his throat, but then he bites down and Derek jerks away, snarling. Then realizes from how Peter’s jerking that that wasn’t on purpose, that was just him startling because Stiles—Stiles did something. Stiles backed out.

“Don’t look at me like that, you both said okay,” Stiles says, as he drags himself around Derek and Peter and up to where he can indignantly jab his finger at their faces. He’s flushed all over, even his belly patched with pink, and he’s gasping but he doesn’t look anywhere near as wiped out as Derek and Peter both are. “And if that isn’t a blissful expression, I don’t know what is.”

“Peter,” Derek mumbles, staring at Stiles. “Peter? He’s human, right?”

Stiles frowns. Peter starts to mutter about Derek being an idiot, and then he stops and makes a thoughtful noise. “Maybe that’s a magical side-effect too?” he muses. “Have you checked?”

“Um, no,” Stiles says after a second. “I mean, I haven’t thought about it, let alone checked. It’s not really on the list of things they warn you about when you take up the dark arts.”

“Good sex?” Derek says.

Stiles rubs some sweat off his face, then considers them. “I guess we could look into that too,” he says. He doesn’t sound that certain, but he does sound like maybe he thinks the chances of him getting a good answer from them are better than not. “So how long’s it take to get to your pack’s territory?”

“Mmm, depends. With sheep, probably slower,” Peter says. “But Talia’s going to want to talk to you, and then she’ll want to call a general pack meeting and she’ll want you to stay for that too, and it’s all going to take a while, I’d expect.”

“Oh, okay,” Stiles says, starting to smile. “So we should be planning for a long-term project?”

Peter starts to answer and then stops himself. He pushes himself up—it takes him two tries, and the first time his chin knocks into Derek’s chest—and looks down at Derek. Sighs because Derek’s still annoyed about being knocked into, and then he dips down and laps at Derek’s jaw till Derek gives in and nuzzles him back.

“Well?” Peter says, pulling back and arching a brow at Derek.

“Yeah,” Derek says. “I guess.”

“A ringing endorsement,” Stiles says, and then laughs and dodges the hand Derek half-heartedly flails at him. “Okay, okay, don’t get all cranky.”

“I’m not,” Derek says. He twists his head over to look at the man, then at Peter. “Sounds good.”

“Good,” Stiles says, a little softer. He leans against the wall for another second, then starts to push himself up. He’s groaning and moving like he’s tired _now_ , Derek notes with some satisfaction. “Okay, fine, I’ll volunteer to get water and the clean blankets, since you came to my place.”

“Sounds good,” Derek says again. He grunts as Peter drops back onto him and curls up, and then…decides it’s not worth the protest. When Stiles gets back, he thinks, closing his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the other sheep, I'll just point out again that it's one ram so the rest are female, so who do _you_ think is in there?
> 
> Stiles learned all his sheep-raising from books, and from the way his long-suffering, rapidly growing in intelligence, flock trained him to see them.
> 
> So this is the end of the main story, although there are a few epilogues coming. I'm working out a sequel that'll pick up on Stiles' father and what happened to him and then close the loop on the revenants, but as far as this trio go, Stiles and Derek and Peter pretty much have their relationship well underway, give or take some judgy sheep looks.


	11. Epilogue 1: Sheep!Scott Shovel Talk

The ram— _Scott_. Scott gets up from where he’d been huddling right in front of the stall, where the first person who limped out would trip over him. He pulls himself around so he’s facing where Derek and Peter, who only has himself to blame for insisting on following Derek that closely, are struggling up from their tangle, and then he transforms into a human. A slightly-embarrassed human who then pulls out wads of wool from his ears. The wads really aren’t that easy to see when he’s a sheep, Derek thinks. Not that that makes Derek any less annoyed.

“Did you have to be _right there_?” Derek mutters, and he’s only keeping it that quiet because Stiles is finally asleep and the man really needs it. “Isn’t it worse if you’re closer?”

Scott blushes and nods. But then his expression gets determined and he puts his hand out. “Stiles…is…important,” he says. He’s still speaking like he doesn’t quite have the hang of his voicebox, but he obviously has the hang of human language. “You…hurt…him?”

“Well, we weren’t planning to, but you’re—” Peter starts, and just from the sneering tone he’s using, he’s about to say something especially insulting.

Derek hears a noise behind them and elbows Peter hard, and then yanks him around when Peter glares at him. Then they both look at the silent huddle of sheep who have surrounded them, each with some kind of metal tool lying in front of it. Hammers, small axes, hand-scythes. Though it’s really the look in their eyes, eerily solemn, that’s the creepy part.

“And…Stiles…read…to us,” Scott goes on. He smiles at the memory. “We…remember. Wolfsbane and…mount—mountain ash.”

“Yes, of course,” Peter says after a second. “Right. That’s very…very…intelligent of you.”

“We were just going to get some food from the kitchen,” Derek says. “We were going to bring it back. And share it with him.”

Scott nods. The sheep bend down and pick up the handles of the tools in their mouths and turn around, doing all of that with perfect synchronization, and then they trot off as Scott awkwardly gets down on his hands and knees, as if he’s still getting the hang of human joints too. He twitches oddly and then wool flows over him and he turns back into a ram. Then sits down in front of Stiles’ stall. A second later, his cheeks bulge out and he starts chewing cud.

“Well, if that tavernkeeper sneaks back in, I suppose you’ll see to him,” Peter says, eyeing Scott with a mix of wariness and respect.

Still chewing, Scott nods. Peter smiles a little stiffly and takes Derek by the elbow and then shuffles them quickly out of the barn.

“We’d better find something good to bring back,” Derek mutters.

“Try and dig up some vegetables this time,” Peter tells him. “What was he feeding them from that garden? Potatoes?”

“I think I heard that sheep like fruit too. Like apples,” Derek says.

They’re not going to stop eating meat; they’re what they are. But Derek has a feeling they’ll be a little more interested in a mixed diet now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Baa," groans one sheep, shoving her head further into the straw. 
> 
> The two sheep tightly snuggled up to either side of her promptly knock together and start to scramble up, only to stop as she bleats pitifully. Then they carefully reposition themselves at her ears.
> 
> " _Baa_ ," hisses another sheep, glaring at them. They glare back, letting out little disgusted noises, while she turns back to pressing herself against the stable wall, listening intently to all those bizarre noises coming from Stiles and those people-wolves.


	12. Epilogue 2: The Hales!  Talia!

When Peter and Derek bring Stiles and the sheep home, the house is in ruins. All of the windows are broken and the doors are hanging in splinters from their hinges, there are holes in the walls and roof, and there’s blood everywhere. Peter takes one whiff and his eyes go such a deep, blazing blue that they’re _purple_ and if Derek wasn’t still in shock, he’d think his uncle might be turning into an alpha out of sheer rage.

Thankfully, that’s when their pack shows up. “Peter! Derek!” Derek’s mother cries, coming up from behind and swooping them both into her arms. “You’re back! So soon! What happened, are you all right, _why_ do you feel thinner?”

“Didn’t you just leave?” Cora says, poking at Derek’s dangling leg.

“Well, but they brought snacks,” Laura says, eyeing an up-to-that-point-bemused Stiles.

Peter winces and then squirms out of Derek’s mother’s grip. He stumbles a little bit, his eyes still bulging, wheezing and clutching at his side. Then he shakes himself and scoots back to get between the pack and Stiles. “This is a _guest_ ,” he snaps. “His name is Stiles and we invited him and you should _remember_ that.”

“Hi,” Stiles says, putting a big, insincere smile on his face. He waves at the pack, and then gestures behind himself at the sheep. Who have all pulled into a tight vee behind him, Scott at the point, as usual, but not because they’re frightened. Their heads are up and their eyes are narrowed, and they have ominously glowing purple tendrils around their hooves. “And these here, these are my sheep peeps. They’re not snacks.”

“Okay…” Laura says dubiously, but she at least moves back, and takes Cora with her when she retreats. Then she sniffs hard and an amused look comes over her face. “Okay. Right. Guest. That’s what you’re calling it.”

Derek would climb over his mother’s shoulder to get to her, except just then his mother puts him down. She holds him by his shoulders, teary-eyed, and then looks between him and Peter. “You’re all right,” she says. “I’m so glad, and of course Stiles is welcome. We’ll make him and his flock right at—”

“Yes, well, before you make any quality promises on that, what _happened_?” Peter asks, pointing at the house. He starts to say more, then stops himself and spins around and stares at the pack. His lips move wordlessly for a few seconds and then, just as Derek realizes he’s counting people, he suddenly sags in relief. Then promptly gets indignant again. “I thought everything was _peaceful_. And my—”

“We have your books, Peter, they’re fine,” Derek’s mother says, sounding a little weary now. She glances back at the house and her shoulders drop a little. “Well, it was peaceful.”

“Can’t blame her for Deucalion’s random fits of insanity,” Laura sticks in.

Peter and Derek’s mother both give Laura annoyed looks; Laura snorts at the first but looks surprised and chastened by the other. Then Derek’s mother sighs and goes up to put her arm around Peter’s shoulders. “He just pushed his pack’s patience a little too far, and when they turned on him, he blamed me.”

“Because you told him, like always, that perhaps peace should start with making his own pack feel safe?” Peter says dryly. He still looks upset about the house, but when she squeezes him against her side, he doesn’t grimace and try to push her off like usual. In fact, he even tilts his head into hers for a second. “So he invaded and we taught him a long-overdue lesson, I hope?”

“Yes. Yes, and we’ve only just started picking up afterward, and I know what you’re going to say, and no, I haven’t had the time to even think about what to do with all the territory we’ve suddenly gained,” Derek’s mother says. Now she looks hassled, brushing nonexistent hairs off of her face. “What’s left of the Blackwood pack doesn’t want it. In fact, they refuse to even go back, they’re all seeking to join other packs. Something about their western border being infested with monsters, and I have _no_ idea what that’s about.”

“Oh,” Peter says.

Derek’s mother frowns and looks at him. She starts to take a breath, as if she’s going to question him, and Derek grits his teeth and raises his hand to get his mother’s attention. When he’s got it, he points to Stiles.

“Yeah, so, about that,” Stiles says, coming forward, eager smile on his face, doing a terrible job of hiding how he’s rubbing his hands together in anticipation. A harried-smelling Scott shuffles forward with him and hurriedly tugs at Stiles’ cloak with his teeth to try and hide the hand-rubbing. “The monsters, I mean. I might happen to know all about them, and have some suggestions about how to deal with them before they threaten your pack. And hey, I can even offer temporary housing while you all figure out what to do with…”

He turns towards the house. Moves his mouth a bit, while his gestures get weaker and more embarrassed. Then—thankfully, Derek thinks, eyeing his family—Stiles just gives up on finding a nice way to put it and points.

“He does know what he’s talking about,” Peter mutters to Derek’s mother. Then he looks up at the house. A regretful look goes across his face. He glances down, grimaces, and looks up again, and the regret is moving into a resigned determination. “Well, the roof was nearly unpatchable anyway.”

Derek’s mother wrinkles her nose. “The cellar really never did smell right. All right, well, let’s get you all washed and fed and rested, and then we can all find out what we’ve been doing. And hear about this temporary housing. It can’t hurt, anyway.”

…Stiles can take that one. Or Peter. Derek’s just going to go back to saying hi to the rest of his family.


	13. Epilogue 3: Stiles' dad and the Argents

Due to the size of their party, the return journey to the revenant-haunted pass goes quite differently. For one thing, if they _didn’t_ at least check in at the garrison guarding the neighboring pass, the garrison guard might assume they’re some sort of malcontent group and come out to investigate. Besides, Stiles really should tell his dad he’s fine, and since he’s bringing back-up at the same time, he figures his father can’t be too mad at him.

So they go to the garrison. Which, as it turns out, is now being run by his dad.

“Werewolves,” his father says, shaking Talia’s hand. He looks mildly surprised, but not wary.

“Yeah, and over here is Scott and he’s a sheeple,” Stiles says.

Stiles’ father looks at Scott, who does his best to look like he’s obviously not dying to rip off his boots, shift into a sheep, and start gnawing on them. Then he looks back at Stiles. Occasionally, he blinks in a very weary way.

“Because…he was a sheep, like the rest of the flock there, but then I kind of, um, unintentionally peopled him. But he’s okay with it, and I got consent before I peopled the other sheeple,” Stiles explains. “So it’s my fault, though it really was an accident, but we’re all cool now.”

“Right,” his father says. He looks at Scott again, scratches the side of his face, and then puts his hand out. “Well, anyway, good to meet friends of my son.”

Scott’s still struggling with getting his mouth around human noises, but he has the physical mannerisms down and promptly shakes Stiles’ father’s hand with a big, hopeful smile on his face. Stiles does have to elbow him when it’s time to stop shaking, but otherwise, he goes over pretty well.

“Okay, so, this thing where you went from cook to garrison general,” Stiles says. “ _What_.”

His father stops looking tired and starts looking annoyed. “What do you mean, what? You left me a _note_ , Stiles, and not only that, you bribed the guards at the _opposite_ gate you used so I’d look in the wrong direction, and on top of that stole the old captain’s boots so I couldn’t even get him to send a search party and you’re just lucky he’s—”

Stiles raises his brows.

His father shuts up.

“He’s…deposed? Resigned? Relocated?” Stiles prompts. “Dad, c’mon, we just went through the whole you yell and I am very sorry and I _am_ and you got all that anger out of your system ‘cause we hugged and what? What? At least tell me whether he’s still alive.”

“No,” his father finally sighs. “No, he’s not. He—”

“Accident in the kitchen stores,” supplies Chris, alias the guy who had a weird, ultra-tense, even more cryptic conversation with Talia and who’s been lurking behind Stiles’ father ever since. “Fell on a cleaver.”

“Accident,” Stiles says. “Okay. So how about his second in command, Mr. Deputy Dickho—”

His father wants to agree, but also wants Stiles to be a polite person so he makes a face at Stiles. Chris doesn’t even bother with the face, just continues all monotone: “Overate.”

Stiles…is starting to sense a pattern. Judging from the extremely amused looks Talia and Peter are exchanging, so do they. “And the quartermaster? The head cook? I mean, Dad, not that you don’t totally deserve the job and I’m unhappy you got it, but you had at least four people ahead of you in the chain of command and—”

“Mishap with a wine-barrel,” Chris says, obviously ignoring the way Stiles’ father is glaring at him. “The head cook.”

“The quartermaster quit and joined a trade caravan,” chimes in Chris’ daughter, only just now returning with the promised drinks. “He was sick, and the doctors recommended a change of scenery.”

Then she pulls up short, looking surprised, as there’s a thump and some clicking noises. Looking way too grateful for the interruption, Stiles’ father frowns and then starts to bend down to look at something next to Stiles. “Is he all right?”

“What?” Stiles says, and then he sees Scott, now in ram-form, blindly flailing in his clothes. For some reason Scott doesn’t seem to be trying to shift back, so Stiles hurriedly helps pull him free and then lifts him so his hooves are clear of the ground. Though he _looks_ fine, not obviously hurt or anything, so why he’d lose shift…he’s staring all wide-eyed at something.

At what’s her name, Allison, who’s looking extremely curious back. “Did he just turn into a sheep?” she says.

“Yeah, well, look, cut him some slack. He’s only been able to go human for a month now, I think he’s doing pretty good just handling the concept of underwear,” Stiles says. He hefts Scott again because Scott is really squirmy and slipping and—

“Er,” Peter says, nodding at Scott’s lower half. “Stiles.”

Stiles looks down, eeps, and hastily drops Scott. Who doesn’t even object to the sudden landing, just scrabbles around on his hooves till he’s stable enough and then promptly scurries off to hide in the flock. “Wow, um, I am…have I mentioned that he’s still learning human ways?”

“Oh, it’s all right, I understand,” Allison says, though her father looks much less sympathetic. She hands around the drinks, then pauses as she gives Stiles his. “I’m happy to try and help and explain how to be human to him, if you want? Dad was saying you might be busy with other things, what with the revenants and all.”

Then she hustles out with the empty tray. She gives the flock a smile and a wave, and while Scott doesn’t resurface, there are some decidedly funny looks on the faces of the other sheep.

Which…Stiles is going to have to work up to asking about, even though he knows he will eventually. That’s the kind of thing he can’t _not_ know, but right now he’s got—he’s got other priorities. “So, anyway, the quartermaster, he didn’t happen to get sick in a kitchen-related way, did he?”

Chris opens his mouth. Stiles’ father looks at him again and he winces a little and then heads out after his daughter, muttering something about checking on the laundry.

“What do they do again?” Stiles asks.

“They keep house and cook for me,” his father says, looking both embarrassed and weirdly shifty. “Seeing as we _were_ having some issues with the kitchen, and I’m too busy to run that and the rest of the garrison, and…look, son, you were away. Some things happened.”

“Yeah, considering we have never, _ever_ had our own housekeeper,” Stiles says dryly. “Weren’t you the guy who said paying someone else to do your cleaning is a slippery slope to irresponsibility?”

“Okay, look, let’s just put that aside for now,” his dad sighs. “Why don’t we have dinner first? It’s dinnertime.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” Derek mutters.

“Shut up, he’s my dad,” Stiles says, while a sheep steps on Derek’s foot for him. “Dinner it is. Always better to be awkward on a full stomach, so come on, guys. Let’s show you around.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You could consider this a teaser for the sequel.


End file.
